Aftermath
by P.L. Nunn
Summary: An alternate version of what happened after Ansasla. After Dark Schneider went to hell and came back to retake his place in the world
1. Default Chapter

aftermath1

**One**

Every year she went to the grave. She brought flowers, because they appealed to her sense of beauty and righteousness and a bottle of the finest wine she could buy, borrow or filch from the cathedral wine cellars. He would have appreciated the wine. Only the second anniversary of his death and yet already it seemed like an eternity. She missed him. She missed him in any guise he might have taken -- and she mourned. But she did that quietly, privately for she was never one to blindly show the world her inner most feelings. She got on with her life, as if she had any choice what with the rebuilding and the expansion of the city and the joining of kingdoms into one greater force that might not ever again be splintered and so devastated. Meta -Rikan was the new capital of the Southern kingdoms. Her king the elected regent of all the provinces which had been destroyed by the path of destruction made by the armies of the Four Lords of Havoc, in their quest to take the seals that bound Ansasla. And even when the Four Lords themselves had been turned from their path of destruction the world had had to deal with the god of Destruction itself.

Two years since that final, fateful moment when power met power and good men died and the most powerful wizard the world had ever known destroyed himself to save her world from being devoured by pure evil. And she left flowers and wine under the tall, obelisk grave marker that perched on a hill in the cemetery that had once been outside the limits of Meta-Rikan, but now sat nestled within the sprawling outreaches of a city that had almost doubled in size. She was the only one who came. No one else wished to remember the anniversary of that brutal victory that rid the world of Ansasla. Not even the surviving members of his shitino -- his generals -- even though they had all loved him.

Yoko came and she would always come for as long as she lived. She would never abandon him to vague memory and legend. A portion of her heart -- her very soul -- would always rest with Rushie. Rushie. Dark Schneider the wizard who had almost destroyed the world himself in his 400 year campaign to gain power unto himself. But he had changed after his defeat at the hands of Prince Larz and the circle of High Priests some twenty-one odd years past. He would always be Rushie to her, because that was who she had grown up with -- the little boy who had carried the sleeping persona of Dark Schneider within him for fifteen years before the seal had been broken by her to release him.

But now he was dead -- truly dead -- and the world went on. A new temple had been built within the boundary of the new city. A great sprawling cathedral to equal the one that sat atop the cliffs of the palace proper. A new Temple for a new religion. Not a new religion exactly, but one that had spread but recently -- over the last handful of years to the southern kingdoms. The worship of the High God -- the god that sat over the other gods that Meta-Rikan worshipped and called on for support and guidance. It came from across the sea and for many years had been practiced in small gatherings within the kingdoms. It was not until the advent of the Prophet that the devastated people of the southern empires began to embrace it. After all, their own gods had done nothing to protect them, despite all their desperate prayers. The teachings of the Prophet promised comfort and salvation and a realm of everlasting peace and tranquillity on the other side of life. A tired and frightened people flocked to the temples of the high god that sprouted up in every city and the smaller shrines that graced almost every town and hamlet. The Prophet himself was followed like he was a god walking the earth, though he discouraged the adoration. He was only the mouthpiece of the high god. Only the man the god spoke through to have his words heard.

Angelo was his name. It was the only one he went by. He had come to the south not long after Ansasla's defeat and began his teachings. Two years was all it had taken for the worship of the high god to spread to almost every person in the south. Two years for them to place the symbol of the high god above those of the lesser gods they had worshipped all their lives. Even the priests -- even her father the High Priest of Meta-Rikan found solace in the new faith. They had welcomed Angelo with open arms and invited him into their most privileged circles. The old king loved him. The crown prince was enthralled by his words. Yoko found him intriguing. A man of many layers. Intense and devoted and powerful. Not unlike the man she honored today, sitting in grass before his grave. Only the devotion was different.

She would have liked to linger longer, but today was a busy day. The city was bustling with visitors come to be present at the royal wedding that was only a week away. Even the expanded boundaries of Meta-Rikan were hard pressed to house all the well-wishers. Princess Sheela was to marry the Prince of Judas. He was prince by default, a distant relation to the royal family of that once great trading city. But he was the only surviving member of the royal blood, all the other having died when the city had been taken by the Four Lords of Havoc some seven years past. It was a political coup on both kingdoms parts. It would align Meta-Rikan irrevocably with its northern neighbor, the strategically located Judas, and it buffered a weak Prince's power among a court full of nobles wishing to take it from him.

She poured the wine onto the ground below the marker and watched the hungry earth soak it up. Then rose, brushing off her knees and made her way back into the maze of narrow streets of the new city. She passed the Temple of the High God, because all streets of the new city lead towards it and found it bustling with activity. Workmen hung on scaffolds on its high walls, finishing stone work that had been in progress for almost a year. People rushed in and out bringing decorations for the wedding ceremony which the old King had decided would be performed by Angelo himself. The temple guard and the kings Dragon Guard stood at posts about the square, watchful of all the traffic, keeping the curious who did not have business here out of the way of those who were frantically trying to prepare the not fully completed temple for a royal wedding. She saw a Dragon Guard Lieutenant she knew well, conferring with a group of the Dragon Guard and changed her path his way. Linden glanced up at her approach, dark eyes under a fall of dark hair. He had been there at the final battle. One of those who had fought bravely and selflessly and almost died because of it. He had survived unlike so many others and was revered among the Dragon Guard because of it. And as people tend, who share terrible experiences, he and Yoko were great friends.

He finished his conversation with the guard and moved to meet her. She looked up at him with excited expectation, almost bouncing on the balls of her feet.

"Have any of them arrived yet? Any word?"

"Not yet." He smiled down at her, a boyish, charming smile set in a fine face. He shifted and the leather of his armor squeaked. "But I do believe our scouts to the north have reported a large party on the road towards Meta-Rikan. That might possibly be one of them."

"Due when?" She demanded.

"Tonight perhaps if the weather holds."

"Ha, if it is one of them, then the weather will be very polite." She grinned at him, clasping her hands before her. "I've got to go make sure all their suites are ready. See you later, Linden." She bounded off and he shook his head fondly at her enthusiastic retreat.

Up through the old city, climbing the winding streets that led up the hill towards the palace, Yoko was in fine spirits. A royal wedding was just the thing to revive the gaiety of a city which had been sadly lacking in it for years. She passed the guards at the drawbridge who nodded at her passage, well familiar with the daughter of the Great Priest Geo Note and proceeded into the palace proper. Finding the major dormo of the king's household was not an easy task in the confusion of the wedding preparations. But, she eventually tracked the middle-aged and stern faced woman down and demanded to know if the three suites of rooms set aside for the sorcerous guests they were expecting were ready. The hectic woman waved a maid to take Yoko to see for herself and told her explicitly that if anything were not her liking she would be expected to see it taken care of herself. The major-dormo was busy seeing to the royal guests already in residence.

Of course the rooms were immaculate. The major-dormo was not so inept at her job that she would let such a thing slide. There was little for Yoko to do, so she found herself back in the halls of the palace momentarily at a loss. Her own dress was ready and she only had to make certain her father's dress robes were pressed and waiting for him. Her own wedding gift to the couple was almost ready to be picked up from the glasssmith who she had commissioned to make it. She might have been welcome in the fluttering court of ladies that revolved around the princess, save that for the most part she couldn't abide their gossip and useless chatter. Besides, there had been a distance between Yoko and Princess Sheela since Schneider's arrival into their lives that did not quite delve into hostility -- far from it -- but did not invite closeness. Women who coveted the same man were not necessarily the best of friends. And Rushie had attracted anything remotely female and naturally there were conflicts. It had not restricted the princess from asking Yoko to serve as one of her twelve honor maids. It was just as much a political move as one indicating friendship. Yoko had a fair bit of status, not only as the Great Priest's daughter, but as one of the those responsible for Ansasla's final defeat. She was held in high regard by the people of Meta-Rikan as well as the nobility.

She had decided to return to her rooms to make certain all her wedding finery was in order. Her rooms were in the cathedral dormitory in the wing belonging to her father. She had left the palace walkways and entered the courtyard between palace and cathedral when she noted a trio of men strolling about the gardens. With fall in full swing, the leaves of the ornamental trees were a tapestry of reds and oranges and yellows. The autumn flowers were in bloom. It was a lovely place to walk in this season before winter would strip all the beauty from the garden.

She walked down the path and the men walked up it, their course destined to cross. They were a trio of great status. The Dragon Prince Larz walking side by side with his soon to be brother in law, Prince Haden of Judas. And beside him, twirling a stem of autumn doise flower between his fingers was the Prophet himself, Angelo.

"Yoko." Prince Larz hailed her with a inclination of his head. She bowed respectfully, conscious of the dirt on the knees of her trousers from kneeling in the dirt of Rushie's grave, and the tangled, wind-blown state of her long red-golden hair.

"Your majesties. Your holiness."

Prince Haden looked down his nose at her, seeing only the dirty clothing and the lack of ornament that told him she was not of royal lineage. Angelo smiled at her warmly, pausing to take her small, smudged hand in his large, immaculate one. There was a holy signet ring of his faith on the middle finger of that hand. She had not declared herself to be a devout follower of the High God yet and was not required to kiss the ring, as the Faithful gladly did. She merely lowered her eyes modestly and blushed at the attention. The Prophet had always gone out of his way to show her kindness. To speak with her when they chanced to cross paths.

"Lady Yoko, you grace this garden with your beauty. Nature as always smiles upon you."

"Your Holiness, you're too kind." The blush spread. He was a magnetic man, the Prophet Angelo. A tall man, but slender, his angled face handsome, his brown hair receding and pulled back into a well trimmed tail at his neck. There were strands of gray at his temples that lent him a distinguished and trustworthy look. As if his brown eyes, so deep and thoughtful, were not enough to drag a body into his influence.

"Majesties, I will catch up with you later to discuss matters further. " The Prophet smiled at the two princes, indicating they might go on without him. "I think I might walk with the lady for a bit in the garden, if that is acceptable to her?"

Goddess, she could not rid herself of the blush. She nodded minutely, eyes downcast, hands folded demurely. The princes walked on, she could hear their footsteps receding down the stone pathway. Angelo lightly touched her back with one hand, moving her forward again.

"I look forward to seeing you in the garb of honor maid. You will be beautiful, I'm sure."

"Thank you." She murmured, watching her feet move across the paving. He intimidated her with his charisma and his benevolent gaze. Meeting his eyes was like looking into a mirror of her own soul. It was small wonder people called him the Emissary of the High God.

"Did you go today, to Dark Schneider's grave?"

She blinked and looked up at him in surprise, shocked that he might know of her pilgrimage. When she didn't answer immediately, he picked up her hand and gently patted it.

"I've heard rumors that you went at the last anniversary of his death and thought you might have ventured there again on this day -- it is the second year since he died, is it not?"

"Yes." She whispered.

"And you loved him?"

She drew a shaky breath, not wishing to delve into those feelings with the Prophet or anyone. "He meant a great deal to me."

"You have a kind heart, Lady. A tender and forgiving heart to honor a man so devoid of sanctity towards the god -- the gods we all worship."

She had defended him for so long, his name, his memory that reflex made her lift her chin and retort. "I honor a man who saved this world, your Holiness. He was a friend to me." Then she realized how tart that rejoinder had sounded and lowered her eyes again. "Forgive me."

"Oh, forgiven, Lady. I know a passionate heart when I see one. You will never be one to meekly follow the flow of general opinion. Not if your heart sees otherwise. But it is a pure heart and a pious one, I think. You are most assuredly forgiven."

They came to the place where the path split off to the cathedral dormitory and she stopped uncertainly. "Your holiness ---"

"Angelo, my dear. When we are not at prayer, please call me by my name."

She opened her mouth and shut it nervously, not quite brave enough to utter his name without an honorific attached. "This is my path. I've -- I've tasks to do before -- before the dinner bell."

He inclined his head generously. "Of course, Yoko. I will see you tomorrow at the Temple for rehearsal, shall I not?"

She nodded and he gave her leave to depart with a lift of his hand. She hurried down the path to the dormitory. She entered the shadow of the doorway with relief, past his line of vision. Somehow she was lighter of spirit once out of his potent presence.

She was at the gates flanking the main road leading into the city from the north with Linden when the company arrived. Twenty men and women in armor, riding fine high stepping war horses with a pack train trailing behind. It was a small force to accompany a former Lord of Havoc, but an impressive one. Yoko recognized some of the faces. Most prominent among them was the lady that rode at the fore of the company. A dark and beautiful face framed by long, black hair and most definitively by the large, pointed ears that slanted out from her skull proclaiming her elven blood. The Lady Arshes Nei. The Thunder Empress. And of the surviving Lords of Havoc the one Yoko was least friendly with. It all went back to the Rushie dilemma. If he had had a passing interest in Sheela, it was nothing to what he had shared with this woman. Arshes Nei he had truly loved. Loved for more than a hundred years. A century long love affair was a hard thing to compete with. She hadn't at the end, even tried, not overtly. She could not fault Arshes for loving him.

The party stopped at the gates and the Dragon Guard Linden had brought stood at attention. Yoko stepped forward. "Lady Nei. Welcome back. I hope your journey went well."

"As well as any journey." The lady's eyes drifted about the new boundaries of the city. There was something distant and preoccupied in her gaze -- and Yoko thought, there was still a certain sadness.

"You're the first to arrive. Gara and Kall are expected soon."

A half smile touched Arshes lips, then drifted away like leaves on the autumn wind. "I look forward to seeing them."

There was so little to say in the face of Arshes Nei's disillusion, that Yoko floundered for words and ended up lamely saying. "We'll escort you to the palace. I've arranged quarters for you and your party."

They all rode back, a spectacle of formidable warriors that drew the attention of pedestrians. Children ran after them, excited and curious at this latest grand visitor to pass through the city towards the palace. Arshes did not speak, but when they passed the hill where the cemetery stood, her eyes strayed that way and stayed there until they were well past it.

"I can take you there -- if you'd like." Yoko suggested hesitantly. Brown eyes turned her way and the dark elf shook her head.

"No. I've no need."

There seemed nothing else to talk of. Idle chatter about the wedding seemed so far below the Thunder Empress as to be insulting. Yoko rode silently, occasionally exchanging glances with Linden. The dinner hour was past and Yoko arranged for trays to be sent to all of Arshes Nei's party. The lady herself went to her suite, declaring that she was tired from the journey and wished to retire. She would play the formal part of Thunder Empress on the morrow. Yoko, to be quite honest was glad to leave her to her dark mood. She was more than happy to join Linen and those of the Dragon Guard who were acquainted with some of Arshes Nei's lieutenants in the plainer and more down to earth barracks dining hall. They drank and socialized well into the night until she was so dizzy from strong guard room ale that she could barely walk straight on her way back to her rooms.

She was on the path back to the dormitory, with Linden's uncertain support as escort through the night when out of the darkness a large shadow appeared at her other side. She yelped. Linden swore and pulled her out of harms way, fumbling drunkenly for his sword. Out of the darkness a man's laughter sounded and Linden's wrist was caught and the sword forced back down into the scabbard before he had fully managed to draw it.

"Never draw steel if you can't even stand up without staggering, boy."

Yoko gasped, recognizing that voice and squinting through the darkness at a broad and shadowed face.

"You blackguard." She cried, not at all angry. "You always come upon me from the shadows. Have you no manners?"

"Not that I've ever noticed, Yoko."

"Gara?" Linden gasped even as Yoko threw herself into the big man's arms. He picked her off the ground effortlessly, swinging her about, so that she was dizzy when he finally set her feet back on the ground. She caught at his thick arm for support.

"When did you get here?" Linden asked, sounding annoyed at being so disarmed.

"Just now. I don't care much for fan fare and the front gate had a gaggle of nobles about it that I couldn't stand the thought of having to talk with."

"So you sneak in like the assassin you are." Linden said, with slightly improved humor.

"Ah, exactly."

"Are you alone?" Yoko demanded. "Why didn't you come in the spring? You promised to return in the spring."

"Trouble on the border. Damn beast-men are crawling all over the mountains. I've had a lot to keep me busy. But I wouldn't miss this. Seeing the princess marry -- seeing you all dressed up as a honor maid."

She giggled, somehow when Gara said the same thing Angelo had, it delighted her. Compulsively she hugged him again, her head barely reaching mid-chest. "I've missed you so much. There are old friends in the guard room. Arshes Nei is here, but she's in her rooms. I think she's still terribly sad."

Gara's brows drew. His face grew solemn. "Still? Where are her rooms, Yoko?"

"She's probably asleep. She said she was tired."

"She's not asleep. I'll find them myself, just give me a clue, girl."

She took a breath, trying to recall the exact location through the fog of drink. She told him. And he patted her on the head like a favored dog. "It's a good thing I'm a friend," he remarked. "This place is as open as a whore's booth during carnival. Take care of her, Linden."

Ninja Master Gara moved through the shadows as if he were a part of them. A fluid extension to their velvety darkness. No one knew he passed that he did not wish to know. He passed the castle guards at their posts and slipped into the hallways of the palace proper with none the wiser. Down halls dimly light at so late an hour and up colonnaded stairs to the guest wing. There were rooms, no doubt that had been sat aside for his own usage, but he sought another. He sought an old friend whom he thought had strayed from a course of ever enjoying life again. Gara was not a man given to deep emotional ponderings. It was not the way of the warrior and warrior he was down to his very bones. Perhaps, the finest swordsman alive, some might say. If you asked him, he might say it was as much the sword, the Murasumi blade he carried, which had more magical power than any inanimate object had a right to.

He paused at a door, leaning in to sense for a presence. Not the one. The next and he felt her within. There were certain people that had an aura that could not be disguised or hidden. He was a master of scenting auras. The door wasn't locked. He slipped inside. The room was darkened, no single candle burning, but the windows were open and a cold breeze blew in. He stayed to the shadows even in this room, searching her out. Found her by the window, slouching in a padded window seat, her knees drawn up, her face turned towards the night. For a moment, all he could do was watch her, drink in the sight of her after so long an absence. They had all planned to meet in Meta-Rikan each spring. The first spring she had not shown and this spring he had been busy keeping the wilder remnants of the their former army across the border to the east.

As always his heart hammered at the first sight of her and as always he forced it to calmness and locked away the stirring in his heart that she brought. She would never return it. Her own heart had been given away long ago, and it was too broken and injured a thing ever to belong to another man.

"What are you doing, sitting here in the dark?"

She gasped, turning, the scant moonlight silhouetting her thick hair and the tips of her ears which flicked back at his question. She did not move from her seat otherwise and he knew her elfin eyes were adjusting to the shadows to search him out, so he stepped forward into the moonlight to make it easier on her.

"Don't you ever knock?" She asked quietly.

"Only when I'm invited. Answer the question Arshes."

"Don't presume to order me, Gara."

"Then tell me what you're doing, still mourning over him?"

Her breath drew in through clenched teeth. She swung her legs over the side of the window seat and stood to face him. "That's not your business. Leave me be, Gara!"

"Sorry, Arshes, but I can't do that."

She stood there, fists clenched, long lovely legs spread, pale ivory trails of night gown waving in the breeze. In the darkness they stared at one another. Then she said softly. "Don't make me regret coming here. Don't make me regret seeing you again."

"What kind of friend would I be if I didn't try and help you. It's been two years, woman. You got over it quicker than this the last time he died on us."

"Shut up! You know nothing of what it is to love."

Didn't he? He looked away from her then, pressing his lips. "I loved him too. Not the way you did, but I loved him just the same. You loose people and you go on, Arshes. You don't waste your life away mourning. What have you been doing these past years? Helping the abandoned, the orphans, like you said you wanted too? Or brooding and sulking and crying away the days? Have you built anything?"

"Gara, leave me alone." There was something quiet and final in her voice that told him he was on the verge of pushing it too far, that she was about to tune him out and keep him tuned out until she could get as far away from him as possible. He didn't want that. He wanted the Arshes back that had been spirited and impulsive and full of righteous indignation over the plight of all the helpless in the world. Like she had been helpless so long ago, abandoned by her people because of her half blood, left to fend for herself - a tiny elfin girl. Then Schneider had found her and she had become a woman of power and of strength. And Gara damn well knew that it hadn't all been due to the wizard's influence.

He held up his big hands in surrender. "All right, all right. Just do me the favor of smiling once or twice while we're here. I miss your smile."

She sniffed at him, not quite mollified. "I don't recall ever smiling that much. What memories do you have that I do not?"

"Maybe it was all in my mind." He grinned. She didn't. Gara sighed, lowering his hands. "I haven't made my formal arrival. I'll show up in the morning for breakfast. I left my men in the hills outside the city. I think I'll sleep there tonight rather than here. Too many stuffed shirts."

He started to leave, reached the door and her whisper paused him. "Don't waste your concern on me, Gara. I hardly think I'm worth it."

It hurt not to turn back and respond to that. He forced himself out the door and into the shadowed hall. Yes, he would find far more comfort in the hills with his ninja's than he would in the palace tonight.

[Next Chapter][1]

   [1]: aftermath2.htm



	2. Chapter Two

aftermath2

**Two**

Yoko woke to cathedral bells an hour before their usual morning chiming. She blinked hazily, head aching with the very strong remnants of hangover and stared out her window at the dark gray of pre-sunrise sky. Why were the bells chiming? Had those rascal boys that plagued the priests with their practical jokes gotten into the bell tower to plague the whole of Meta-Rikan? If so she hoped the got the beatings they deserved. She lay listening, searching for the discordant sound of untrained bell-tollers. There was a pattern to it. Not the haphazard play of boys. There was a name and a meaning for this bell pattern but she could not for the life of her recall it.

Out side her doorway she heard the patter of feet running down the hall. Then more and the chatter of frantic voices. Her heart began to pound a frenzied beat in her chest. Woken too soon and too quickly with too much ale consumed the night before her head swam and flashes of vision interspersed with the bright lights. Death. Crying. A people crowding the streets in mourning. A gilded coffin being lowered into the earth. A crown in hand -- in the Prophet's hands -- being lowered to the smooth brow of the Dragon Prince.

She sat up, gasping and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She fumbled for her robe and hastily donned it, even as she pelted for the door, turned the lock and ran out into the hallway into what seemed a sporadic migration out of the dormitory. The courtyard was filled with people in various stages of dress. Most, like herself had risen quickly and wore no more than their nightgowns and robes. She caught at the arm of a passing priest and cried.

"What's happened? What's wrong?"

He turned wild, red rimmed eyes to her. Tears streamed down his face. She stared aghast, afraid to hear what he might say.

"The king --- the king is dead."

He pulled away from her and hurried with the others towards the castle. She stood, her hands clutched before her, shocked -- speechless and numb. The king was dead? The king was dead. "No." She whispered softly, remembering the stern faced, old man who had ruled Meta-Rikan for all her lifetime -- twice her lifetime. Her vision came back to her. The death, the mourning, the crying, the crowning. She buried her face in her hands and cried as so many others in the courtyard were doing.

People crowded the road into Meta-Rikan. Peasants carrying their belongings on their backs, their crying children tugged along by the hands. Farmers in carts, merchants in their wagons, the lower nobility on horseback, all flocking in towards the sprawling city that took up most of the valley. The riders might have stood out against them, had the people had attention for anything but getting into the city proper. They were well outfitted and armored. The armor alone of any one of the knights costing more than any one farmer or ten farmers on this road might earn in his lifetime. The horses were destriers, thick legged and thick furred, tossing their mighty heads in agitation at the closeness of the people. These were horses used to killing men on the battlefield and their riders were hard pressed to keep them in check.

The captain of the company, at the direction of his lord, stopped a young aristocrat on horse back and demanded to know if all this hectic traffic was due to the wedding of the princess. What he was told made his face go white and he returned to his lord grimly with dire news. The company reined their horses to the muddy slope at the side of the road and urged the great animals over terrain that the other travelers avoided, plunging ahead of the sluggishly moving line. At the gates where the crowd was stymied and backed up, the massive war horses bullied their way through past outraged cries. The gate guard, plainly doubled and tripled moved to halt the passage of armed knights into the city.

"Halt! Halt!" Hectic guards cried, waving their arms recklessly before the noses of the destiers. The horses tossed their noses in the air and stomped enormous metal shod hooves in the dust . "You can't enter the city armed without permit."

The caption moved his horse about so that he looked down on the guard blocking their path. "Lord Kall-Su has permit. Do not block his passage."

The guardsman blanched, looked beyond the caption to his lord, who sat cloaked and silent on a white warhorse. The man waved frantically to his fellows, indicating they move out of the way. "Forgive me, my lord. I didn't know. The confusion ---"

Lord Kall-Su inclined his pale head marginally, a token that the slight was forgiven and forgotten. His men moved their horses forward, clearing a path in the crowd for him to pass unmolested. Into the city they rode, down streets that had not been there the last time Kall-Su had been in Meta-Rikan. Almost two years and then the city had been a shell of its former self, so damaged by war was it. Now it was a sprawling monstrosity that seemed to have little design or logic to the way its streets turned. There was a temple who's spires rose above the houses and shops that clustered around it. It was almost impossible to pass that square, it was so crowded with people. They made their way by force of heavy horse body alone along the edges at the back, squeezing past the bodies of people already pressed together.

There seemed to be a man at the steps of the Temple who spoke to the crowd. Kall-Su lifted one hand to bring his men to halt, while he stared at the temple steps and strained to hear the words of the priest upon them. The crowd certainly seemed to be hanging on his speech. The words barely drifted to the back of the square.

"---A time of mourning. But fear not for the High God has planned even this, as he plans all things. Darkness has not come upon us -- but a new beginning. If your faith is strong and your devotion to the High God unshakable you too shall find glory in the place where our beloved King has journeyed. Only those who revel in the darkness of forbidden worship and forbidden magics shall suffer the fate that awaits in hell."

It went on. The call to the faithful and the subtle warnings to those that dared practice other beliefs. The warnings to those that had the gift of magic not church condoned. If only that priest on the steps knew what sat at the back of his congregation. The lord Kall-Su had heard such sermons before. A hundred times or more, before he had gained the title and the prestige he held this day. Been condemned as a witchchild and a demon's get before he had truly known what magic was and most certainly before he had learned to use it. Those rustic priests and their pious followers would never have dared to denounce a sorcerer to his face. Behind his back perhaps.

Clear blue eyes scanned the crowd, passed over the rooftops and traveled to the cliffs upon which Meta-Rikan castle perched. He blinked slowly, a fall of long brown lashes over high, pale cheeks. The man on the steps of the temple annoyed him and he wanted out of this crowd of fervent followers of the High God. He signaled his captain and the horses began moving again.

Doorjambs were draped with black ribbons to signify the mourning of a city. The castle itself was surrounded by grievers. The Dragon Guard at the main drawbridge saw them coming and cleared as best a path as possible, their commander saluting smartly as they passed and ushering them into the outer bialy where confusion somewhat less claustrophobic than that outside ruled. They reigned in their horses, hooves clattering on cobblestones while the captain called loudly and imperiously for someone to take the horses. A frantic stableboy ran from the direction of the castle stables, catching the bridal of Kall-Su's mount. He dismounted with fluid grace, swinging his cloak over one shoulder, surveying the courtyard as he pulled off his gloves. He wiped a hand through pale blonde hair, freeing it of road dust. The steps leading to the main hall of the palace were crowded with people coming and going, loitering in groups, conducting business. A trio of servants overburdened with flowers brushed past him on their way up the stairs. Petals fell at his boots. His captain, Kiro, complained at the discourtesy, complained at the lack of formal welcome. Kall-Su ignored it, stepped over the petals and onto the stairs. In the aftermath of the death of the king of Meta-Rikan and the Regent of the Southern alliance he was not offended or surprised at the lack of proper greeting. Captain Kiro was accosting passing servants with requests to find someone of authority to see to his lord.

The guard towers at either side of the main gates had been rebuilt, Kall noted. The last time he had seen them they had been in ruins. Everything had been rebuilt in so short a time. The industriousness of the faithful, he supposed.

"Kall!" A female voice called his name without benefit of title or honorific. "Kall-Su!" His caption beetled his brows in disapproval looking for the perpetrator. A slim, red haired figure slipped down the stairs and past Kiro and attached herself to Kall-Su. He took a step back at the accostment. "You're late. You were supposed to be here two days ago." She accused, taking a step back with her hands still on him.

Kiro, who had been frowning, grinned. "It was not his fault, Lady Yoko." The captain assured her. "One of our young men -- became enamored of a village girl and when her father discovered them -- well, there were restitution's to be made."

Yoko craned her neck to smile up at the captain, a becoming blush spreading across her cheeks. "Oh. Well -- then, there were extenuating circumstances."

"As there were here." Kall-Su observed and she turned back to him with a crestfallen look. "Oh, Kall, he died in his sleep two nights ago. He'll never get to see his daughter get married. She won't have her papa to give her away." A tear welled up in her eye and she wiped at it reflexively.

"Is the wedding still be as planned?"

"It will be pushed back a couple of days, but yes. It's politically prudent to get it over with as soon as possible, I'm told. They'll crown Larz king the day in two days."

"And does the regency of the south pass to him as well?"

"They haven't decided yet. Everybody who has a say is here -- so they've been clustered together for the last two days talking about it. The Prophet is pushing for Larz to get it. A lot of them listen to his words."

"The Prophet?"

"Goddess, Kall, you have been hibernating in the deep north, haven't you? You have heard of the religion of the High God up there in the cold, wintry north, haven't you?"

He lifted a pale brow at her. "We've received a rumor or two, yes. You mean the Emissary of the High God? That Prophet?"

"That's the one."

She took his arm in hers and led him up the stairs. "Captain Kiro, you've got a room inside Kall's suites, the rest of your men have billets in the Dragon Barracks. Arshes Nei's men are there, but Gara's Ninja's prefer to camp out side the city."

"I'm surprised Gara's not with them." Kall observed.

"Tell me." Yoko rolled her eyes.

Into the grand main hall of the palace, where people in black moved like worker ants busily about their business. Yoko wore a black tunic over her trousers and a black ribbon in her hair. She showed him to his rooms, chattering all the while about the confusion that had taken over the city. He looked over the very fine exterior, feeling uncomfortable in the midst of that very same confusion. The cold north was a much more hospitable place than the lair of vipers that lived in a royal court.

He was still acquainting himself with the layout of his rooms when a familiar face appeared in the still open doorway. Gara laughed and strode into the room with purpose in his stride, ignoring the hand Kall-Su extended in greeting in favor of wrapping his arms about the smaller man and hauling him off his feet. Yoko smothered a laugh of delight. Kall smothered a curse of indignity before he was sat back on his feet. He glared up into Gara's beaming face.

"Still ugly as ever." He drawled, straightening his cloak and armor. Gara laughed.

"Still have the face of a girl. Where the hell were you the last two springs?"

Kall brushed imaginary dirt from his sleeve. "Busy. Is there a problem?"

"What is it with you two?" Gara sniffed disgustedly. "Sulky and brooding. Gods, I hope it's not catching."

"Well," Yoko saw fit to interrupt. "I'll have some lunch sent up to you. There's a formal dinner at the evening chime. Shall I tell them to expect you?" she looked at them both hopefully, then added. "Arshes promised to be there."

"I'll be there." Gara said.

Kall-su sighed. "I suppose I should, having gone to the trouble to make the trip."

Yoko's smile lit her face, making it worth the agreement to a doubtfully dismal supper. She leaned forward and confided. "I'll make certain to seat you at the interesting table."

"Oh, lovely."

Gara laughed, clapping him on the shoulder. "Damnit, Kall, I've missed you. So, tell me what you've been up to ----"

The dinner was a state affair. Solemn and full of formal comportment. There were perhaps ten tables crisply laid out in white, with gold and silver utensils beside the finest of porcelain plates. The hall was filled with some of the most influential and powerful people in all the kingdoms. Yoko had made certain the Lords of Havoc were seated at the same table and that that table was a good ways from the royal one where Larz, Sheela and Prince Haden sat amidst the company of other kings and royalty. Having been responsible for the death of Prince Haden's immediate family, it was wise not to have them mixing. Not that the whole thing had not benefited the prince. Not that the lords of Havoc cared one whit what he thought anyway. Yoko sat next to Kall-Su, with Arshes Nei on his other side and Gara beside her. None of them seemed inclined for dinner talk. Although Kall did incline his head towards her once and inquire about Angelo.

"Who's the man between Larz and Sheela?"

"Angelo. The Prophet. He's become Larz's closest advisor. Larz has asked him to perform the coronation ceremony."

And that was that as far as Kall's conversation went for the evening. But they all listened. Everyone of them had their ears open to the speculation that ran rampart about the hall. The minor nobles were frantic to know what the ruling kings of the south had decided about the Regent. Would it stay in Meta-Rikan? Was Larz, only three years back in human form after a long stint in the body of a dragon pup, ready for that rule?

They went though soup and salad and appetizers while people whispered opinions and forecasts among themselves. The main course arrived via a caravan of uniformed servants. Roast boar. Marinated fowl. Fish in butter sauce. Clams bubbling in wine and their own juices. Steamed vegetables and souffled creations. It was a fine fare. And when all that had been taken away a plethora of desserts were displayed for the guest's choice. Then the after dinner wine while folk sat back to digest. A harper traveled about the tables strumming melodically on his instrument. Yoko was happily stuffed. She was content to sit back and listen to the music and enjoy the silent company of old comrades.

The Prophet interrupted it. He stood and every eye in the hall immediately riveted to him. He lifted his arms and smiled at the gathered lords. "My friends. My faithful followers. It is a sad time for us all. To loose a king and a father and a friend is a blow that we shall mourn for many weeks and months to come. His loss to the south as great a blow, for he was the man whom we all entrusted our safety to after a time of such darkness and devastation. It was no small feat to get the entirety of a land to agree on one man to act as Regent over all. And now we find ourselves faced with the decision to chose another man. All the powerful and wise men who rule the lands of the south have come to another agreement, one that I am proud to announce first to you, noble guests and mourners. The Regency of the South shall remain in Meta-Rikan under the guidance of our crown prince, Larz, who has proven himself to be a worthy protector against -- the darkness that threatens all men's souls." His eyes flickered to the table where the lords of havoc sat, a subtle reminder of just what darkness he spoke of and who had served it. Yoko took a breath and glanced askew at Kall to see his reaction. He had none He simply sat sipping his wine, a bland look of vague interest on his face. Further down the table Gara was frowning and Arshes showed no more interest in the speech than she had in anything since she had arrived.

There was more to the speech, but it was mostly rhetoric praising the High God and predictions of greatness for Larz rule. The silence could not be maintained for long and Angelo graciously sat down and let the room burst into applause and cheering.

"Very interesting speech." Gara said afterwards, when they had all slipped out and walked through the moonlit gardens.

"Yes. I saw him on the steps of the temple in the city." Kall remarked. "He seems vigorously opposed to -- the darkness -- as he puts it."

"He's very dedicated." Yoko explained. "I think he feels the souls of all his followers are his responsibility."

"Humm." Kall said and Gara snorted.

"I'm for seeking some real company with the Dragon Guard, who's with me?"

"Not me." Yoko said. "I had such a hangover the last time."

Arshes shook her head negatively. Gara looked at Kall, then sniffed. "And I can assume you'll pass mingling with the common, working men, Kall-Su."

Kall lifted a brow but refrained from response. Gara shrugged and waved to them as he trotted off.

"I shall retire." Arshes said. She wore long, embroidered formal robes, the design exotic, hinting at elvin origin. She began moving away from Yoko and Kall-Su.

"Arshes," Kall called after her softly. "Are you well?"

She hesitated, her back to them. Her profile as she half turned her head, was shadowed. "Why shouldn't I be? Are you?"

He did not answer, which might have been her plan, so she retreated in silence. Kall-Su lifted a hand to the bridge of his nose, as if massaging away a head ache. In the moonlight his pale hair fairly glowed.

"She is not all right." Yoko said quietly. "She's so wounded and --- and I think she tears at the wound so constantly that it can't heal."

"Your second sight?" he asked. "This is what you see with it?"

Yoko swallowed and nodded.

"You could always read people better than they could read themselves."

"It's why I never believed you and Gara and Arshes were evil --- and Him -- when the rest of the world insisted you were."

"You're a strong girl -- woman -- Tia Note Yoko. Never let your heart be so ravaged-- by anyone -- that you become like she is now."

She laughed. "I don't know if that's the most cynical or the most beneficial advice I've ever gotten, Kall. Sometimes I think I should have mourned more, but -- I just had to stop after a while. I couldn't live like that."

Kall took her hand, raised it to his lips, breath warming her skin. "You are wise beyond your years, lady. Rest well."

He left her in the garden, a swirl of indigo cloak that melted into the darkness. Yoko scuffed her feet a bit on the cobblestone, thinking that he was still sad as well, but perhaps not for all the same reasons as Arshes Nei. What she also saw with her second sight, was a shy young man forced into the controversial position of sorcerer and lord, who had never, despite all his power forgiven himself for being what the pious priests of his childhood accused him of.

He hated the company of so many noble lords. He hated walking among them as if scant years ago he had not been on the verge of conquering their lands. He hated imagining what they whispered behind his back, though he would never, ever loose composure enough to let them know it. He wished Gara had not opted to join the men-at-arms in their drinking games, for despite their differences, he had missed the Ninja Master and would have enjoyed a private talk. He wished Arshes were not so self absorbed in her own pain. But none of that seemed destined to happen this night, so Kall-Su sat before the grand marble fire place in his suite and sipped at the fine wine the servants had provided him.

The Dragon Prince would now become the Dragon King as well as the Regent of the South, the cradle of civilization. He supposed Larz would be as good a Regent as any, considering the choices left after the years of war. Larz had the power to hold the throne -- the title -- better than most. He had the adoration of the people, being the legend who had defeated Dark Schneider the first time around, twenty years past, though anyone who knew better was well aware that he had not done it alone. He had also helped in the defeat of Ansasla, as had they all, so he was doubly popular.

Kall drained the glass and poured another, wishing the oblivion of a wine induced sleep. He dreamed less that way. He could never quite shake the nightmares of the God of Destruction, of its sinewy fingers crawling though his mind, of it's presence inside him. It was gone forever and still it plagued him, made him ashamed and morose when he sat alone with time to think on his hands. He finished the last of the wine and sat back, listening to the crackle of the fire and the quiet sounds of Kiro slipping back into the suite after a night of carousing with the guard.

He lay his head back against the chair and shut his eyes, dozed in the warmth of the fire. The dreams of Ansasla did not come. But something else did. Something that had seemed to wait for his slip into unconsciousness before it sprang upon him, took him in its jaws and rent him violently. Visions sprang to mind and images that were foreign and incomprehensible, bringing with them almost a physical sensation of pain and -- violation. Things he loved were hurt. He was hurt, terribly. How long he slept under the grip of it he knew not, but he came back to himself with a start, to find himself sprawled on the rug before the fire, with sweat dampening his hair and tears streaming down his cheeks. He rolled to his side, shaking, trying to banish and understand the fleeting images at once. They ran from him, fickle and taunting in their humors, slipping through his fingers when he tried to hold onto them and understand what had happened. What the nightmare was that had racked him so. He could not stop the shaking. He drew his knees up, squeezing his eyes shut in efforts to block away the last tendrils of the night horror. Never had any of his dreams of Ansasla effected him so and they were the worst he'd ever had. The only thing remaining of it was the flashing image of a face. A smiling face with eyes so intense they shook him to the core. He had seen that face -- he knew he had, but the flickering residue of dream icon would not stay put long enough for him to put a name or a memory to it.

He felt sick and claustrophobic in the warmth of the room, so scrambled to his feet ungracefully and made to the balcony doors. He flung them open to the paling sky of pre-dawn, murmuring a flight spell even as he stepped out onto the cold stone of the balcony with bare feet. He felt gravity release its will upon him and wished himself up, quickly, into the thin cold air of morning where he could breath and the sweat and tears could dry from his skin. The castle was a miniature collection of towers and building blocks below him, as was the sprawling city that lay surrounding it. All was dark, no lights shining in windows. All save the new temple that sat within the boundaries of the city. Its towers shone with the light of burning lights and its windows were alive with illumination. He hovered, hundreds of feet above the rooftops, the thin silk of his tunic plastered against his back in the wind and stared down at the one bright spot in a field of dark shadows. He remembered the man on the steps preaching to his gathered flock. The Prophet who had sat in a place of honor next to the new King and Regent. It was the same face that had punctuated his nightmare.

[NEXT CHAPTER][1]

   [1]: aftermath3.htm



	3. Chapter Three

aftermath3

**Three**

A funeral and a coronation all in the space of a week that had supposed to be filled with the preparations for a wedding. The streets were filled with the cries of mourners over a man who had ruled their land for longer than most of them had been alive and the laughter and cheering of a people who had been given a young and vital new king. It was peculiar week, full of contradictions and emotional upheaval. Yoko bore it all with a sort of dazed efficiency. She did the things she had to do, attended the functions she was expected to attend and marveled at the effectiveness of a bureaucracy that chugged along with undeterred stubbornness despite all the upheaval.

Prince Larz was crowned king the day after his father was laid to rest in the royal crypt deep under the palace. The Coronation took place in the great throne room of Meta-Rikan palace under the eyes of every noble lord that could be squeezed into the hall. The Prophet, Angelo performed the ceremony. She thought absently, standing crowded in among the well-dressed well-bred aristocracy, that not more than two years ago her father would have been asked to do the honors. Angelo had risen that far, in that short a time.

Gara was there for the ceremony. Arshes and Kall were not. No one but Yoko and Gara noted their absence. Arshes she understood, but Kall had been unusually anti-social for the last few days. There was nothing to do about it. She had too many other concerns confronting her. The wedding was three days hence. She had heard rumors that Sheela had wished it postponed longer, but her advisors had convinced her to go through with it as planned. She had also heard that Sheela had been crying a great deal since her father's death, locked in her rooms so that no one might intrude. But maids tended to know everything and they talked.

She crowded out with the rest when it was finally over, stiff neck and sore feet from several hours of speeches and formality. There was a open buffet that spread through two halls, the numbers of guests being too large for a formal dinner. There was to be a coronation ball later in the night. She picked at the food and watched the faces of the men and women around her. So many of the wealthy and the powerful gathered in one place. So very many of them had taken to wearing symbols of the High God at their throats; the new fashion to announce one's piety.

"That was a torture I'd not willingly endure again." Gara came up beside her, hands full with plate and glass. "What a bunch of windbags."

"Shsss." She smiled past her own glass at him. "Not so loud, some of those windbags are lurking in the vicinity."

"Humph. Looks like Arshes and Kall had the right notion."

"They both need to show their faces," she said. "Every other lord of the realm is here. They both hold lands and they both need to be recognized by all the other powers that be."

"You doubt they are? None of us are welcomed into the cozy little circles of the rich and powerful, but believe me, they never forget us."

"No, but they can't be allowed to overlook you either. They both have says in the decisions the regency makes."

"Oh, little Yoko, you've grown so political in your dotage."

"Well, I live in a palace, you big ape. I can't help it. Why don't you go find Arshes and drag her to the coronation ball this evening? She needs to dance -- to have some fun, even if it kills her."

"Or me most likely, for making her do it." Gara snorted. He stuffed a sweetmeat into his mouth. "You going to go after the Ice Lord?"

"I think I can convince him to make an appearance. Or I can beg and plead and pretend to cry. That always works with men."

"Hummm, maybe I should try it with Arshes."

Yoko giggled at the thought. "Well, even if she won't dance with you, I'll put you down in my book."

Gara nodded solemnly. "I'll hold you to that, little girl."

Arshes wasn't dancing. Gara stood not far from her, glumly milking his umpteenth glass of the very expensive wine brought out for this special occasion. If Yoko thought she could have gotten away with it, she would have gone over to the Thunder Empress and attempted to cajole her into attempting to enjoy herself. She had been on the receiving end of Arshes Nei's cold looks too often to wish to provoke one now in the midst of such festivities. At least Gara had gotten her here. It was a start.

Yoko had not danced yet herself. Kall-Su kept potential partners away with the distant, imperious look on his face. His eyes were colder than the northern tundra's. One might have thought these people were still his enemies from the way he held his body and the tightness of his lips. After cajoling and pleading for him to attend, she could not bring herself to leave him. If she had, she felt certain he would, in short order, have drifted silently away, leaving all the ordinary mortals to while away the night.

The dance floor was filled with gracefully revolving couples. The lilting music of a waltz flowed through the halls. She saw the new king dancing with the sister of neighboring king. Prince Haden and Princess Sheela shared a slow dance before the princess begged off and retreated to the sidelines to be surrounded by her own sympathetic court of ladies.

"So, how are things in your lands?" She asked Kall for lack of anything better to say or do. He half glanced at her, before his eyes flickered back out to drift among the guests. "Did this year bring good harvests?"

"As well as any."

"Oh. So no one will starve this winter in the north?"

He looked back at her as if she had asked some monumentally stupid question. "People always starve in the North. It is a harsh land with little fertile ground for planting and a short warm season to do it in."

"Oh. Oh. What do you do then, if your villages don't have stores for winter?"

"The ones that recognize their province lords -- the ones that aren't nomadic, can buy grain or trade for it from their lords."

"You have villages in the north that don't owe fealty to you?"

"The cold North is not so civilized as the warm lands of the South, Yoko. There are people and things that live in the Winter Mountains and the Tundra that know no master. And honestly it isn't worth the effort to force allegiance of them. They trade with those that are under province rule -- so there is benefit to both."

"It sounds brutal. I have to admit, I'm happy to live in Meta-Rikan, where winter is not so terrible a thing. Its full winter there already, isn't it?"

"It is."

"You must be glad to take a foray to warmer climates to get away from it."

He lifted an elegantly crafted brow at her. "Lady, you forget my reputation. I am the High King of Ice. It holds no secrets nor terror for me."

"Ah -- well, yes, I suppose so. But still -- don't you get cold?"

He almost laughed then. A quick flash of a smile that one so rarely saw from him. "You are determined to reach the heart of the matter, are you not? Yes, it's cold. One just learns to tolerate it."

"Do you want to dance? I really want to dance."

"I don't --"

"Please, Kall-Su. This is such a wonderful tune. Just one. Maybe if Arshes sees you doing it, Gara can talk her onto the floor."

"I would prefer not."

"But you'll humor me anyway -- please?" She blinked up at him yearningly with her most potent helpless female stare.

"If you insist." Grudgingly he took her arm.

It was a lovely mid-range waltz, simple and graceful in the flow of couples about the dance floor. For all his reluctance to engage in the practice, Kall-Su was a competent partner. As if he would blunder about at anything. He guided her about the floor, true to the pattern the other dancers wove and she let herself be lost in the rhythm and the enchantment of the motion. Eyes followed them. Watching the man that was in the running for being the most powerful wizard alive and the young woman who had been the beloved of the most powerful, when he was alive, perform the simple joy of dancing. At that moment she reveled in the stares. They were not fearful or condescending now, they were merely inquisitive.

The waltz ended. He stepped back from her, inclining his head with the perfect grace of a gentleman thanking a lady for the honor a dance. He extended his arm to lead her from the floor.

"Lady Yoko." Someone hailed her through the crowd. A man in the white and gray tunic uniform of the Basilica Guard slipped through the dispersing dancers towards her. He wore the silver symbol of the High God on a chain about his neck. He was tall and thick about the shoulders and legs. A man of rugged features and short, spiky hair. The captain of Angelo's Basilica guards, the holy guardians of the temple and the Prophet himself. The most unusual thing about Captain Sinakah was his eyes. Pale green orbs with tiny black iris that never seemed to dilate. Angelo said it was because the Captain had been present once when the High God had spoken to the Prophet and his eyes were forever more fixed as they had been when he had seen the true light of the All Mighty. Nevertheless, it made Yoko nervous to look him in the eye.

Yoko and Kall turned, waiting for the man to reach them. He bowed his head slightly at one or both of them, his expression fixed into neutrality.

"My lady, My lord. His Holiness, the Prophet has requested that you introduce the Lord Kall-Su to him."

"Oh, well, all right." Even as she reflexively agreed, she felt Kall's fingers tighten on her arm. She glanced up at him, but his face was unreadable, his eyes shuttered by a thick veil of lashes. "Kall?"

But Captain Sinakah was ushering them through the reforming dancers. The strains of a new tune melted into the air. There was a platform where the highest of the nobility might sit in comfort and overlook the ball. Larz sat there, talking with Sheela and Prince Haden. At the edge of the platform a cluster of holymen and nobles played court to the Prophet, who was speaking animatedly, moving his arms and hand expressively as he usually did during sermon. Angelo saw them coming and broke off from his rhetoric. He stepped towards them in welcome, holding out his hands to them.

"Ah, lady Yoko, how beautiful you look this night."

"Thank you, your holiness."

"And this must be Lord Kall-Su, whom I've heard so very much about."

Kall did not inclined his head or indeed do more than stare at Angelo as if the prophet were a blank wall and held as much interest for him.

"Umm, yes. High King of the north. This is him." Yoko blundered nervously, her arm going quite numb from the grip Kall had on it.

"Ah, is not the correct title, High King of Ice?"

Yoko nodded.

"How do the barbaric people of the north call you, Lord Kall-Su? What honorific do you bear there?"

For a moment Kall didn't answer, then his fingers loosened on her arm and he disengaged. Unobtrusively she folded the member to her, rubbing the place his fingers had gripped.

"It would depend on whether they are enemies of mine or not."

"Ah, your enemies feeling the might of your sorcerous powers." Angelo smiled charmingly at him.

"If it is so warranted."

"How fairs the fellowship of God, in the cold north, Lord Kall-Su? Are the pious welcome in your lands?"

"They are as welcome as they are in any land. They come as they please -- if they've the stamina to survive the winters."

"Ah -- the truly righteous man can endure all manner of afflictions to spread the workings of God. Is there a temple to the gods within your own city, my lord? What faith do you practice?"

The gathered clergy and nobles behind Angelo stared expectantly, waiting for the answer. Yoko blanched and tried to hide it, wondering what had caused such interest in Kall from Angelo. The Prophet was on the hunt for something, even though she sensed no particular harmful intent from his probings. She never sensed anything but benevolent causes from the Prophet.

"I practice no faith and worship no god." Kall-Su said bluntly. "But any who serve me may worship as they will."

Angelo nodded as if that answered some question he'd had in mind. "I understand. Being cursed with the dark magics -- no faith would have you. How unfortunate for you never to have been allowed the patronage of a god."

Kall's lashes flickered. He drew half a breath in offense or surprise, she could not tell. Angelo face melted into lines of sympathy and he reached out as if to bless one of his faithful with his touch. Kall drew back, a step so sharp that he surprised himself from the quick flash of dismay in his eyes. Angelo's own brown eyes widened, then he sighed as if saddened. "The High God will always welcome those who are truly repentant. He even has forgiveness for those cursed from birth with the stench of the Demon."

"I shall keep that in mind." Kall inclined his head. "But, if you will excuse me." He left no room for argument, turning on his heel and marching away, not bothering with the circumspect route around the dance floor, but plowing through the dancers as if they were not there. Yoko stared after him in anxiety.

"Poor boy." Angelo said, placing a hand on her shoulder. The familiarity startled her. But good manners did not allow her to shrug out from under his touch. "Are the rumors true that he is common born? Cast from his birthplace when the nature of his dark magics began to make themselves known?"

She wanted to go after Kall. She wanted to berate the Prophet for his condemnation. Of course she dared not.

"I've heard such, your grace." She murmured. "You would have to ask him for the truth of the matter."

"I think I can guess, he being what he is."

"He's a good man, even if he doesn't worship the gods."

"And you my dear, are a naive, sweet girl. With age, you will come to more fully understand the nature of men."

Perhaps he was right. She could not comprehend what the Prophet had been about. The whole conversation had tasted of accusation and censure. It had bordered on attack almost.

"Please excuse me, your grace." She pleaded softly.

The fingers brushed her shoulder, shifted her hair, then retreated. "Of course, my child."

She did not look back at him. Kall-Su was no where in sight. She skirted the edges of the crowd, looking frantically for him.

"What happened?" Arshes Nei appeared beside her.

"I don't know." Yoko complained. "I really wish I did. The Prophet just finished insulting Kall -- I don't think I can call it by any other name. And it was like-- like Kall knew it was coming, before Angelo even opened his mouth."

Arshes frowned, scanning the crowd from her slightly taller vantage. "He's not here."

"I know."

"I'll go find him. It's a boring party anyway."

She stalked off. Yoko sniffed, thinking that it wouldn't have been if the half elf had danced at all.

"I'm leaving."

Arshes moved to block Kall's path from window to door, hands on hips, brown eyes narrowed in speculation.

"Why?"

"I find it unbearably contrived here. I yearn for the more honest face of the north."

"You're lying."

Kall glared at her, offended. If she had not been dressed in a clinging gown of creme that fell off her shoulders and dipped to reveal the lovely curve of her golden brown back, he might have issued a challenge. He could not quite bring himself to do it to a woman in a ball dress. He narrowed his eyes instead and stalked around her.

"What do you care, Arshes? You've not shown a spark of interest in anything else here. I'm surprised you bothered to come at all."

"Don't try to divert me, Kall-Su. I'm not at question here, you are. You're angry, I can see it in your eyes and you're never so careless as to let your anger show. And there's something else that I can't quite place. What did that damned holy man say to you to upset you so?"

"Nothing. Ask Yoko if you're so curious. It was her that set you on me, was it not? Why cannot women help from meddling in other's affairs? Have I meddled in yours? No, I leave that to Gara, who moons over you and who you ignore as you might the lowliest cur in the street. He always had more respect for you than Schneider did ---"

Her hand shot out and connected with his cheek. He expected it. He knew what to say to rise her ire. How to make her forget her concern for him.

"Don't you dare, Kall-Su. You and I will have more than words if you continue so."

"More than words about what?" Gara stood in the doorway, Yoko hovering behind him.

Arshes blushed, turning her eyes towards the fire.

"So you marshal them both, do you, Yoko?" Kall accused of her.

"You run off like the hounds of hell are on your heels and you wonder at concern?" Gara strode in, looking at the half packed chests. The servants gathering his things had been run off by Arshes when she'd stormed into his rooms. "Damn, Kall, since when you do retreat at the gibbering of some stiff necked priest?"

"I'm not in retreat. I just -- I just have the feeling that I'm needed at home."

He turned his back to the lot of them, facing the open balcony doors. The Prophet -- the face in his nightmare. He could not shake the terrible disquiet. None of that dream but the face and the flavor remained and still it terrified him. He thought about the word and decided that yes - terrify - was as apt a description as any for the uncontrollable emotions that ran just under the surface of conscious thought when he recalled the Prophet. He couldn't understand it. He couldn't stop it and he wanted out. There was no way he could stand another meeting, chance or not, with that man and not blast him from the face of the earth. And wouldn't that sit well with the newly constructed Regency of kingdoms.

And the three of them -- comrades -- friends -- didn't have a clue. And how demeaning to tell them that a simple nightscare had so unraveled him. He couldn't and he wouldn't explain. "I have yet," he said coldly. "Ever needed any of your consent for my actions."

"Kall, I'm sorry." Yoko cried. "If I had known he would be so awful -- he's never like that."

"It matters naught."

"Kall --"

Gara held out an arm to quiet her. "Fine. If you've got the urge to leave so badly, there's nothing any of us can do to stop you. If you don't want to tell us why -- that's fine too."

Kall glanced back at Gara, who was being unusually accommodating. When the Ninja Master did not add any further remark. Kall nodded once, grateful for the acquiescence.

"But," Gara finally added. "If you do, what with the little scene during the ball and all the eager little clergy and nobles who overheard -- it will make you seem the coward."

Kall-Su stiffened, expelling a gust of breath through flared nostrils. First Arshes Nei pushes him to the point of wishing violence on her, then Gara follows fashion. Two who were supposed to be his friends were most certainly provoking him this night. But, not nearly so much as the Prophet. No one in easy memory, save perhaps Schneider himself, had dared to utter such sibilantly debasing innuendo to Kall-Su's face. They whispered behind his back -- that he knew -- but none dared to so blatantly attack him openly. The Prophet must surely believe that some hand from heaven guarded him.

"Everyone will think you're too ashamed to face him again and if that's the case it must be because he's right. That's what people will say."

"I don't care a whit what people say."

"You damn sure seemed to care what he said."

"He offended me. I see no reason to stand blithely by when my honor is offended."

"No, I can't recall you ever doing such a thing." Gara nodded.

"What do you want of me?" Kall finally flung an arm out and waved it at the lot of them. Yoko's eyes were as big as moons. Arshes' were narrowed thoughtfully. Gara's scarred face managed to look innocent, even though Kall knew very well he was far from that.

"Just don't let them think they can ostracize us. Those of us with power not church ordained. Think about it, Kall -- these past years, what has the church of the High God been preaching to the people? Trust in the church. Trust in the power of the High god and forsake all other dark powers for they are the workings of demons or hell or whatever. Notice the hedge witches that used to sell poultices and wards and lovespells are gone. They used to hawk their wares on the street corners. Now, if they do still practice its behind closed doors because the people are buying into the Prophet's garbage. You think he didn't plan that little meeting? You think he didn't plan on singling out the most powerful practitioner of the 'dark power' and making a public scene? Think about it. Yoko, where have all the hedge witches gone?"

She stared at Gara, wide eyed, frightened over talk that had obviously never occurred to her. Over things that had happened under her nose without ever her notice. Yet Gara saw it after a years absence. Kall hadn't noticed it at all. He hadn't noticed anything but the temple and the crowded throngs of worshippers. He's right, that's what they're doing. Trying to drive one more stake into any power not church ordained. It explained that nonsense the Prophet had been asking him. It did not explain the dream. That he couldn't shake. Yet the practical part of him, the strategist in him could not rationally back down when a volley had been fired at him and his. If he just disappeared into the night word would get out -- would most assuredly get out -- that the Prophet had chased yet one more demon spawn from the midst of the faithful.

He was not willing yet, to let them have that victory. "All right. Till the wedding then."

The Princess Sheela looked beautiful, all done up in white silk and filmy gauze that trailed over her hip length black hair. Yoko walked behind her, along with five other maidens to take their places before the alter in the temple of the High God. The whole of the ceremony went without a visible hitch. The vows were exchanged, the blessing of the Prophet given. The newly wedded royal couple were hailed as man and wife. Yoko slipped away during the aftermath, when people were mulling about in preparation of retreating to the reception up the hill in the palace, when she saw Angelo homing in on her. Gara, Arshes and Kall were impossible to find in the commingling of people. She honestly didn't know whether Kall had lingered at all after the ceremony ended. For all she knew he might now be on his way out of Meta-Rikan.

Later, during the reception, hard-ridden and tired messengers came to the king with news from the mountainous border to the east that a ragged army of the beast-men had broken past defenses and even now razed settlements at the edge of the southern kingdoms. Larz made his first official appointment when he asked Gara, who had been patrolling the eastern mountains with his ninja's anyway, to take the mountainous lands formally as Lord Defender of the Eastern Range. Gara, who had never held title other than Ninja Master and never actually held lands of his own, having come to the conclusion that being responsible for a hungry people was not nearly as entertaining as fighting the battles for those that were; found himself at a loss. He told the king he would give the offer serious thought. Walked ten steps away and turned and accepted. Larz congratulated him. Gara shook his head wondering what he had gotten himself into.

The mountains of the east were sparsely populated, but there were villages and settlements deep in the woods. Foresters and hunters and gathers of woodland herbs and mushrooms found nowhere else.

He asked Arshes Nei if she would accompany him, to set matters straight. At first she declined, but Gara persuaded her with tales of the destitute and homeless mountain people -- children left orphaned after the half-men ravaged the villages -- that would need the help of someone strong. She agreed finally, with some small bit of determination back in her amber eyes. With a purpose she had lacked for some years now.

And Yoko -- Yoko settled back down after the excitement and prepared to face another year in Meta-Rikan. Another year of growth. Another year of watching the faithful congregate in a city three times it's original size. Another year of peace.

[Next Chapter][1]

   [1]: aftermath4.htm



	4. Chapter Four

aftermath4

**Four**

One year later

The city was full of the sounds and smells of autumn market. The last of the crops were brought to market, what wasn't sold to the royal storehouses bought by merchants and to smaller extent to private individuals. Pigs and cows were herded to market for slaughtering and salting for the winter months. Fur traders from the mountains of the east and some even from the distant north brought their wares. Wine sellers from the west displayed their finest summer vintages. All in all autumn market was a festival. Everyone went to the market.

Yoko had an array of ribbons she had purchased from a silk weaver, a new winter cloak lined with ermine on the inside, and a jug of very fine Therusian wine under her arm for her yearly visit to the Grave. She walked along cheerfully, her hair in a braid down her back, in the tunic and leggings that were much more practical in the cooling weather than the festive skirts and flimsy blouses that the other young women wore to the market festival. She stood out anyway. A young woman bursting with health and vitality and a careless beauty that drew the male eye effortlessly. Men followed her passage with their gazes, turned to watch her walk by, sometimes getting slapped for it by the ladies they happened to be with. Yoko grinned happily and strolled on, content with the world. It was not until she passed the booth of a rug salesman that she happened to find herself mingling with the gray robed forms of priests, who were gathered in turn around the Prophet and of all people her own father, the Great Priest of Meta-Rikan, although he seemed to be taking a second seat nowadays to Angelo, touring the market.

Angelo saw her first, before she could slip away unnoticed. She had over the last year since the coronation scene between him and Kall-Su, tended to avoid the Prophet when she could. It did not deter him at all from seeking her out upon occasion.

"Yoko. Has the market been good to you today?"

Given no choice, she stood before her father and the Prophet, her arms full of purchases. "It has."

"What have you there, Therusian wine? You've not taken to the sin of partaking of spirits, have you?" It was said with a tone of humor, but there was censure under it. Before Gara's observations, she had never noticed how Angelo used words so much to his advantage before.

"No." She murmured.

"My daughter takes it in tribute each year to the grave of Dark Schneider." Geo Note explained, as though he feared Angelo think her a drunkard.

"Ah, is it that time again?"

She did not answer. She wanted away from the cloying presence of so many of Angelo's followers. His captain of the Basilica Guard, Sinakha, stood beyond the Prophet's shoulders, staring at her with his strange eyes. She shuffled her feet and said.

"There's one more think I need to purchase. I should hurry before they sell out."

"By all means, hurry then." Angelo gave her leave. Her father frowned at her from under his graying mustache, as though he thought her manners deplorable. She lowered her eyes and slipped though the priests, finding escape.

When she was gone, the Prophet shook his head sadly at Geo Note, who had become a regular attendee at his sermons, who urged his own parishioners to listen to the words of the Prophet.

"I fear the girl spends too much time honoring that dark spawn of hell. The rumors fly that she sits at his grave like she might at a worship."

"She had a -- strange relationship with him." Geo Note said. "She does not take her honoring of him past this one day a year. I would put a stop to it otherwise."

"There is only so much the hand of a father can do to curb the willfulness of a young woman grown. She needs the guidance of a husband to set her on the path of righteousness. Why have you never betrothed her, my friend?"

"I have tried." Geo Note sighed, the tortured sigh of a neglected father. "She will have nothing of it. She is a strong girl. Her time in the Samurai Resistance during the wars gave her a will of her own."

"A girl like that needs a strong man." Angelo observed. "It is unseemly that she should run wild so."

"Perhaps."

The Prophet, having spoken his piece on the matter of Yoko's marital status turned his attention to other things. A carpet for his study in the temple.

Afternoon brought rain to skies that had been clear. A cold front accompanied the storm, the frigid fingers of its breezes creeping in through cracks in windows and under doors. It was a sign of a cold winter to come. Yoko looked out the window of her room into an evening gone dark and unpleasant and wished she had gone to the Grave earlier. She was in for a soaking now and a cold one at that. Fortuitous that she had bought a new, well oiled winter cloak. She pulled a heavy woolen tunic over her head and donned her work boots, lacing them tightly to keep out the water, gathered her bottle of wine and her bouquet of autumn flowers and ventured into the rainy dusk. There were covered walkways circling the cathedral courtyard, leading from the dormitories to the cathedral to the outbuildings that served it and finally to the east wing of the palace. Well bundled people kept strictly to these thin havens from the rain.

She passed a group of women, coming from the cathedral. Fine ladies by their expensive cloaks, by the polished state of their hair and faces. Yoko hardly paused to look at them, so used to ignoring and being ignored by the glamorous birds of paradise that peopled the king's court. There were so many more lovely young ladies now that there was an unmarried king sitting the throne than there had been.

"Yoko?"

She started at her name, turning to look into the painted midst of silk and fur. Princess Sheela or Queen Sheela if one granted her the title of her husband's throne, was bundled in the center of the ladies in waiting. Her face was half hidden by the edge of her hood, her soft, black bangs, framing eyes equally dark. Tentatively she smiled at Yoko. Yoko blinked at her, surprised to see her out on such a miserable afternoon. Surprised she wasn't attending a royal dinner with her husband or some equally prestigious function. She had only returned to the city a week ago, to honor the death of her father. She would stay perhaps for another month to visit with her friends and family before returning to her husband's kingdom of Judas. Yoko hadn't spoken to her since her arrival.

"Your majesty." Yoko bowed her head respectfully, eyes straying to Sheela's hidden figure, wondering if the rumors of the princess's pregnancy were true.

"It has been a long time. How do you fair?"

"Oh, I'm well. How do you find Judas, Princess?"

"Ah, a fine city. Not quite as seasonable as Meta-Rikan -- but it is home now."

"Its not seasonable tonight." Yoko smiled. "What a miserable time for you to be talking a walk. Were you at worship?"

Sheela nodded her head. Her ladies looked bored.

"I'm surprised you didn't go to the temple of the Prophet. Every else does nowadays. Even your brother has made it his official place of worship."

"I know. I just wished for something more comfortable. There is too much change in my life nowadays -- I yearn for old, familiar things."

Yoko could sympathize. Very much so. There were times when all the new practices and byways of the engorged Meta-Rikan made her want to close herself in her rooms and hide. She to missed the old days before all the upset and destruction that had changed her world. She missed growing up with Rushie, before he had ever been discovered to be the vessel of Dark Schneider. She missed just being Yoko, the unremarkable daughter of the high priest. But wishes never came true. That was a hard, cold fact that had been drilled into her over the years.

"Well," Yoko said, impatient to be about her business. "Its too cold and wet an evening for me to keep you standing here ---"

"Are you going to his grave?" It was blunt and Sheela stared at her with expectant, sad eyes.

"I -- yes."

The princess nodded once, pulled her cloak tighter about her throat. "Say a prayer for me." She murmured and hurried past, her women trailing behind her, some casting doubtful stares back at Yoko.

She was left standing there with the wind tearing at her cloak, tearing at the petals of the flowers in her hand, with nothing to do but recall just how many women Rushie -- Schneider -- had been adored by.

She slipped past the gate guard, who waved her on from their shelter of the small gate house and she braved the slick cobblestones of the town below. Even with her hood up her hair was soaked and cold water dribbled down the inside of her tunic. Lightning flared at the edge of town, followed almost immediately by the boom of thunder. She shuddered, ears echoing the clap. She doubted her own reason to braving this storm merely to pour wine into already soaked earth and leave flowers that would be destroyed by morning. Her sojourn could just as well be accomplished tomorrow if the weather permitted. She was cold and shivering and soaked to the bone. The lights of a nearby tavern beckoned. Warmth and song and mulled cider were powerful sirens.

She plunged past, half way there and determined to reach her goal, wet or not. Again lightning struck within the boundaries of the city and thunder shook the ground. She ran up the muddy trail to the cemetery, shaking from fear of the storm as much as from cold.

Monuments to the dead loomed in the darkness ahead of her. Light blinded her and the earth shook. She cried out, deafened, body tingling with the nearness of the strike. The wine jug hit the earth and landed with a sloshy thud. She stood, grasping the flowers in nerveless hands.

The exterior of the Temple had been completed, with much skilled labor from artisans and stone masons. A great statue of one of the holy messengers of god perched just outside the great glass windows of the Prophet's study. He sat with his back to the outside world, his hands paused in their movements, quill frozen above a sheet of fine parchment, ink wet on its tip. Behind him the flash of lightning illuminated the face of the angle. The roar of thunder rattled the window panes. The Prophet stared blindly into the fire across the room, his eyes wide, his mouth pressed tight as if in concentration or communication with some higher deity than mortal man might usually hold converse with. He was the Prophet, after all.

After a moment, he sat the quill down, careful to wipe the excess ink from its tip. He walked to the door of his study and quietly asked the young priest on duty in his outer office to summon Captain Sinakha. Then, he went to the windows and stared out into the storm. On his mouth lingered a slight smile.

Yoko stumbled in the mud and went down on one knee. Mud slid down her boot tops. So much for dry feet. She might as well take off her cloak and revel in the rain for all the good it had done keeping her dry. She sludged up the hill, past the mausoleum of some wealthy family and towards the obelisk that marked Rushies grave.

And found it wasn't there. Not in one whole piece at least. The ground was rent as though some great hammer from heaven had struck it. The jagged, lower half of the monument lay tilted at an odd angle, the upper half in a hundred pieces on the ground around it. The air smelled of ozone and smoke. She stood in shock, staring, knees loosing all strength, buckling. She slid to the mud, feeling shards of stone under her palms. Of all places, lightning had struck here. Obliterating his monument.

She started crying, tears mixing with cold rain. Recklessly she crawled over the chunks of stone, over mounds of disrupted earth, clawing uselessly at grass and dirt. There was a great hollow where the strike had centered, where earth had been blasted away from. Splintered pieces of wood jabbed skyward. The remains of a funeral box. She wanted to back away, not to see if anything else remained, horrified to see -- and she could not. She peered into the darkness and found only wood and the hollow bottom portion, mud filling it rapidly, of the coffin. If a body had ever been there, none was now.

[**Next**][1]

   [1]: aftermath5.htm



	5. Chapter Five

aftermath5

**Five**

He wove through the darkness with the stink of decay about him, the feel of mold on the crusted fragments of fabric that stuck to his flesh. The rain beat down with enough force to hurt. Blinding, freezing, debilitating. Pebbles and dirt inside his boots drove him to distraction -- so much so that he pulled them off in a frenzy. He pulled at the offending scrapes of fabric, scratching at skin underneath with long sharp nails with animalistic intent to remove that which aggrieved him. Like an animal all he knew was the here and now of lightning slashed skies and driving rain and a black maze of stone that was confounding to his sense of direction. He saw a hundred things in the flashes of lights - a hundred ordinary things that his mind could not put words to, could not connect to things a man might know. So he fled, seeking haven and knowing nothing of what form that haven might take. 

Long streamers of hair plastered to his face, blinding him almost as much as the constant flashes of lightning. The storm had washed away the stink and the film of dirt from his skin. He pelted down a narrow way, crouching close to a rough stone wall. Two shapes came out of the darkness from the other way, protecting themselves from the rain with a cloak held over bowed heads. 

He cried out. They did, a woman's voice and a man's in fear and surprise. His was the rage of an animal caught off guard. He stuck out, pushing them backwards, running away from their sprawled forms, desperately wanting out of this maze. There were lights through the haze of dark and storm and he veered away from them, pelting through a thin and dirty alley, past a makeshift shelter where ragged figures huddled. He scattered the outer fringes of their belongings in his rush, and they cried out, emerging out of the darkness to defend what was theirs. There was a wooden fence that blocked his path. He beat a fist against it in pure blind panic of all the walls closing in about him. From behind the alley folk skulked towards him, the glint of dull steel in their hands. Gibberish came out of their mouths. It grated on his hearing, as the rain did and the thunder and the harsh sound of his own breathing. Somewhere in his madness a tiny awareness that he should have understood glimmered at the back of his mind. It made him afraid and being afraid made him angry. He snarled at them and lunged, bearing one backwards under his weight, hands about a thin throat. A blade sliced him from the side, cutting under his armpit and scouring his ribs. Pain of a different nature from what he had known in this cold, dark place laced through him. He screamed, flinging back his head, wet strands of hair whipping about his shoulders, his face. He cried something and did not himself know where the words came from -- or even understand what they meant . He extended one hand and a streak of lightning every bit as blinding as that released by the sky rushed out to envelope the knife bearing. The creature did not even have the chance to scream and his sizzling remains caused the others to scatter in disarray, abandoning their make shift shelter for favor of the rain slicked streets outside the alley. 

The one under him was cringing, face hidden under crossed hands, body a tight knot of fear. There was no threat there now. He sensed that as any animal might and rose, favoring his injured side. He touched it with his fingers gingerly, felt the gaping edges of flesh leaking warm liquid. He brought fingertips to his lips, tasting the salty stuff. A chill passed over him. He hugged one arm to the wound and loped back out to the street. There were figures coming down the way towards the alley -- towards him, drawn by the screams and the magic. He veered away from them and heard their calls following him. Out. Out. Out. That was the extent of his thoughts. Escape was the whole of his world and this maze seemed lacking of any convenient exits.

The young priest came in with a tray bearing tea and sweetbread. The Prophet stood at his window, ignoring the service, staring into the storm darkened night. He looked over the shadowed rooftops of the city that had built up around his temple and in the distance, perhaps some fifteen, twenty blocks away there was faint flare of light that was not descended from heaven. The Prophet's eyes widened. His hands rose to touch the cold glass of the window panes. For a moment his lips moved, silently reciting some prayer. Then he turned to fix his aide with hard brown eyes. In careful precise wording, the Prophet gave the young priest a message to carry, biding the man repeat it before letting him leave to find Sinakha. When the priest was gone, the Prophet left the study and strode to his private rooms, where he shut and locked the door. Beyond his bed chamber was a small room he always kept locked, where certain holy relics were kept. He wore the key on a chain around his throat just below the symbol of the High God. 

Inside there were chests and boxes. He rummaged about, looking for a particular chest and found it finally under a stack of wooden crates. It was not quite of the nature of the others. Metal and oddly smooth with a odd locking mechanism that was triggered not by a lock, but by softly clicking dial with numbers about its edges. He turned it this way and that and back again. Then lifted the top to reveal a deep well filled with things that must surely have been relics of some past god, for one of them held place in the world today. He found what he desired, wrapped in a sheet of felt, closed the chest and spun the dial. He took his treasure back into the softly flickering light of his bed chamber. On the bed he unwrapped it. A pair of plain, steel colored bracelets. Smooth and featureless on the outside, scarred with lines and ridges on the inner cuff. He picked one up, running his fingers along the inner rim, found an indent and pressed it. A tiny red light, no larger than a pin head began to flash, signaling life within cold metal. The Prophet smiled to himself. 

After all these many, many years, the spark of life remained.

Yoko ran all the way back up the hill to Meta-Rikan castle. Her side ached from the exertion, he cloak was a sodden weight that hindered more than helped her. The gate guards barely recognized her in her headlong rush, and moved reluctantly out into the rain to halt her progress. She wiped hair from her face and with uncertain glances at each other for the wild look in her eyes, they let her pass. Past the main bailey, around the side gardens of the palace where walkways shielded her from the driving rain; through the kitchen courtyard and into the cathedral gardens. She was limping by the time she entered the cool, dry corridors of the dormitory. She left a trail of water behind her, him of the new cloak dragging the floor. 

At her father's door she pounded mercilessly until the sound of footsteps approached from the other side. He opened the door a look of censure on his face for whoever came so diligently calling at this evening hour. The look shattered into one of concern when he saw her and her state. 

"By the goddess." 

"Father. Father you've got to come. I didn't know what to do. The lightning -- the lightning destroyed everything. There's nothing there. Oh, goddess there's nothing in the grave!"

"Yoko calm yourself. You're shivering. You'll catch your death." He reached to draw her into the warmth of his rooms and she shied back, afraid that once she entered the comfort she might not be inclined to leave, and she needed her father, who knew so much more than she about wizardly matters to come and see the grave himself. 

"You've got to come!" She cried. She was verging on hysteria, she knew she was and could not stop it. "Please, please come."

Geo Note stared at her, aghast. Then he rummaged in the nook by the door for his own cloak. Came out with a second one and demanded she give up the soaked one she wore. She did so frantically, dropping the wet thing on the floor outside his door and donning the dry warmth of one of his winter cloaks.

They started back out into the rain.

He stopped to catch his breath, vision spinning from the pain in his side and the last nearby flash of lightning. The thunder crack that followed shook him to the bones. He pressed his back against a rough stone of a wall and howled in retribution for the scare it had given him. The night sky gave him no heed, rumbling without note of his presence. 

There was a wide street with many lighted doorways and windows. He abhorred to travel down it, vulnerable to the light and whatever dwelled within it. He had no choice save to go back, so he clung to the shadows as best he could, hurrying with what strength he had left after running so long, with the blood draining out between his fingers. 

A doorway opened and someone stepped out under an awning with a bucket to dump in the rain. He brushed past ruthlessly, a scream of surprise drifting in his wake. There was a intersection that was smaller and darker and he took it instinctively. Someone shouted behind him and he flung his head about, wild eyed to look. Shadowed figures had followed him. They began down the little dark street behind him. Panic. Escape were the only things his mind could process. The only things that it had processed since his memory began. A wagon blocked his passage and he veered around it, driven into an alley much like the one he had been attacked in before. Nothing but stone wall at the end of it. He hissed his frustration and spun to escape the trap. But dark, robed figures blocked the mouth of the alley. Others pelted through the rain behind him. 

He was ready to go through them, not caring that there were more of them, but a low, rhythmic chanting began to issue from their lips. It paused him. It made a dread pass through him that he had no notion the origin of . He staggered against a discarded barrel. Righted himself with a hand on the wall. In his moment of disorientation others had entered the alley. There were faces close to him. He screamed in outrage and struck out, raking a man in the face with his nails. A hand slapped around his upper arm, and something stung the underside of the flesh. His head snapped around a snarl on his lips. There was a man with drenched black hair, a few inches taller than he, with oddly luminescent green eyes. He lost the snarl in a haze of senses beginning to swim. Tried to pull away but the man swung out with a club in hand. The business end of which connected to his skull. 

The chanting was the loudest thing in his head, louder even than the pumping of blood and the pounding in his skull. His knees gave way and the man let him go and others came upon him with their clubs. He ceased to know anything, which was a relief. 

Geo Note stood looking down over the ravaged pit where the grave had been. Water dripped off the cowl of his cloak, off the ends of his mustache. Yoko stood behind him, arms wrapped about herself under her father's oversized cloak. 

"He's not there." She said. "Is it magic?"

"I don't know." Geo Note replied quietly. "Do not jump to conclusions, girl."

"Conclusions? Father -- his body is gone!! What happened to it?"

He swung his gaze to regard her, then jerked his head towards the city. Light flared in the midst of the maze of houses and shops. A growing ball of energy that momentarily illuminated the night and the tower of the Temple before it subsided and let the storm regain it's dominance. Yoko felt it too. Something that was not nature originated. Something drawn from that plane where magic dwelt. A powerful dark spell that only the most powerful, the most skilled might use and survive the summoning. 

"Goddess." Geo Note whispered. "That was -- an Exodus spell. Yes, yes, I'm sure of it. And at the Temple of the High God!"

Yoko mouthed a curse -- a prayer. Terror and hope ran through her. She grabbed her father's arm and pulled him away from the shattered grave. 

"We've got to go to the temple, father."

Gathering wind neither knew they still had, they ran through the city streets towards the temple of the High God. They passed commotion and panic on the way. People were in the streets despite the rain, holding glass covered lanterns, upset in their faces and voices. The closer they got to the temple, the more crowded the streets, some running away from the temple, most going towards it. 

The street they followed, along with half a dozen others bled into the temple square. A crowd of perhaps a hundred folk braved the rain before the steps. Cries rent the air. Screams of anguish and mourning. The face of the temple to the right and above the main steps had been gouged as if by lightning strike. Chunks of stone littered the steps and ground. There were bodies on the ground that priests and townsfolk labored to take within the shelter of the temple. The Basilica guard stood wary and watchful, helping when they could, attempting to keep the majority of the stunned crowd out of the way of those helping the wounded -- or the dead. It was hard to tell. 

Geo Note caught the arm of a priest, demanding to know what had happened. The priest looked at them both with frightened, spooked eyes. "I don't know. I don't know." He cried. "I was at prayer within the temple shrine. I saw nothing but priests and Basilica guard going out and then a great explosion and cries of men in agony. The Prophet himself came, and --- and everything was confused. A demon, he said. A demon attempted to destroy the temple of the High God."

Yoko couldn't wait. She slipped past her father and up the steps. A temple guard tried to prevent her, but she evaded his reach and entered the great hall of worship. The ceiling towered above, supported by a hundred arches. Faintly the wind whipped echo of bells could be heard from the towers. Row upon row of benches receded in the distance, ending before the grand dais where stained glass windows looked down upon the place where the Prophet preached. On the floor and upon benches men were laid. Blood stained the carpet. There were more cries of women and children clustering about the bodies than there were from the injured. There were few signs of life as was surely to be expected by mortal men caught in the brunt of an Exodus spell. If that was truly what it had been. 

She passed the charred remains of a man, his face unrecognizable under the crust of blackened flesh. The bright glint of the holy symbol at his throat was the only sign that he might have been in the employ of the temple. She cringed and passed on, looking from face to face of those frantic people in the temple. She heard a prayer being said over a dead man, and saw the Prophet himself kneeling over the corpse, holding the hands of the man's widow while the woman sobbed out her grief. He rose, pressing her into the care of one of his priests and his eye caught Yoko. 

"My child, this is no place for you."

"What happened?" she demanded, forgetting all honorifics in her desperation. 

The lines in his face deepened, his eyes took on that almost glow they had when he preached from his pulpit. "A spawn of hell has walked among us and wrecked havoc on the good and faithful children of the High God. Look around you --" his voice rose so that people around them could hear. Eyes were drawn to him, cries quieted as the people in the temple strained to hear the words of their Prophet. "--Look at the grievous injury done to the earthly bodies of God's servants. Look outside at the damage done to the house of the High God in hell's attempt to usurp our faith."

People crowded the doors of the temple, the guards not able to keep them back as they struggled to see and hear Angelo.

"Careful, careful my friends for the victims of hell's jealous wrath lay here. Victims of the dark that threatens our very souls. Be strong. Be faithful and ward your hearts and minds against the dark forces that bring such destruction and pray for those it has struck down."

Yoko felt sick. She saw the faces of the women bent over their husbands and brothers and sons and the nausea rose. An Exodus spell had done this. Could it have been -- had it been cast by -- him ? 

"Who did this?" she whispered, tearing her eyes away from the mourners, looking intently up at Angelo. He was damp, she noticed. And his face and hands were dirty, as if he had helped to bring the dead inside to sanctuary. He put his hands on her shoulders and she stared up, bedraggled and shivering from cold. 

"A spawn of hell, my dear. One of the soulless demons sent to destroy us."

"Where is he?" 

He lifted both brows at the question. "It is not a thing to concern yourself with. It is a matter for God's minions."

"Is he here?" she cried, her voice rising enough to attract attention. 

"Who do you speak of?" Angelo asked in bafflement. 

"Rushie. Schneider!" 

He blinked at her. Whispers began to circulate around her. Geo Note came up behind her, a solid presence at her back. 

"Dark Schneider? Dark Schneider is dead my dear. This has upset her terrible, Geo Note, perhaps you should take her home."

"His grave is empty." She cried. "I saw it. I did. And that spell ---"

Angelo looked past her to Geo Note, who solemnly nodded accent to all she said. Angelo frowned. 

"Risen from the grave? It is not possible or godly." He looked around at the expectant listeners. They hung on his every whisper. He lifted his voice so that all could hear. "I do not know this man Tia Note Yoko speaks of. So I cannot say whether the demon who murdered your husbands and sons wears his form -- but if what she says is true, then he is surely the work of the dark master of hell. Only a creature of hell could walk the earth after rotting so long in the grave. God save us all."

The cry went up. Outrage and calls for justice. Angelo turned his pious eyes to Yoko. "Spurn your thoughts of this devil, Yoko. Have faith in the High God."

"Where is he? He's here, isn't he? What have you done with him?"

"It is not your concern, girl."

"Yoko." Geo Note restrained her when she might have surged forward and laid hands on the Prophet. 

"I want to see him." She cried.

"You can't." Angelo said calmly. "Whether he is what you say or not, he is mad. And dangerously wild. It is not safe."

"I'll take her home." Father said, bodily pulling her with him, through the crowd, some of which cast her dour, angry looks. Past the bodies and down steps back into the rain.

"He's there." She said, held close to Geo Note. "Angelo has him in the temple. I know it. I sense it."

"I believe you, daughter." Geo Note said. "But there's no helping for it now. Not with the dead in his wake and the town up in arms. Wait until the storm stops and emotions cool. Then we'll see what might be done."

"How could they take him, father? How? Unless he's injured -- or not himself."

"Calm yourself, Yoko." Father's arm tightened about her shoulders. "We'll deal with it later."

Later was much later. Someone, likely father, slipped a sleeping drought into her tea and she slept like the dead late into the afternoon. She woke up in the little chamber off of father's rooms where his servents somtimes slept. She was in a long white sleeping gown and her hair had dried in a mess of tangles. She lay, blinking grit from her eyes, no accustomed sunlight streaming in to let her know what time it was. For a moment she was more concerned with the strangeness of the room she found herself in than the events of the prior night. Then memory came back. She swung legs over the side of the bed, searched for clothing and found nothing of hers. She ran from the room and into father's rooms. Empty. Then out the door and down the dormatory hall, regardless of her state of dress and to her own rooms. She doned whatever clothing was easiest at hand. Ran her fingers through the mess of her hair and finally twisted the whole lot of it up in a bun and jammed hair pins through to hold it. 

The sun was out. Aside from puddles in the courtyard there was no sign of the storm last night. She stopped a priest in the cathedral courtyard and asked where the Great Priest was. The man did not know. She accosted two more with similiar results. Ran up the stairs into the cathedral and asked the Holy Sword on duty if Geo Note had appeared today. No. Not today. Not even for morning prayer, which by the by, Yoko had missed herself. 

Back out into the courtyard. Where would he be? The Temple? Should she go back to the temple and confront the Prophet herself? He never took her seriously, unless he was complementing how she looked, and he would surely not take her requests to heart unless Father was there to back her up. She needed to find father. One of the Great Priest's aides walked across the gardens, arms full of scrolls, about some important task. She yelled across the courtyard to get his attention, then pelted full out towards him. Oh, his look of disapproval was priceless. She ignored it. 

"Where is my father? Have you seen him today?"

"I believe he is taking audiance with the king." The priest sniffed. 

The king? The king! He had gone to Larz about it without waiting for her. She hissed, turning on her heel and running down the covered walk towards the palace. She had to slow to a more dignified pace once inside the royal walls. People stared at her nonetheless as she passed. There were a great many whispers behind sheilding hands. There seemed a cloud of speculation over the whole of the palace. The guard contingent had doubled. She saw Linden conferring with a trio of Dragon Guard. They all looked at her when she hurried up, frowns on their faces, worry in their eyes. 

"Where's the King?" she demanded. "I've got to see the king."

Linden nodded to his comrades and took her by the arm, leading her away. "He's in conference."

"I know that. With my father. I have a right to be there, Linden. Where? In his study? His office?"

"Is it true?"

She took a shaky breath. "I don't know. I -- maybe. Angelo wouldn't let me see him. The King has to make him let me see him."

"They say he killed a begger outside The Polished Owl Tavern. They say it was a man with no more than rags on, who had long silver hair. Eleven men were killed outside the Temple. Three survived. Priests, the Prophet's guard, volunteers at the temple who came outside to see what the commotion was."

"If it was him. Then they threatened him somehow. He reacted to that."

"He didn't blink at killing a man even when he was at his best." Linden reminded her. "What if -- what if he's back -- again -- and he's evil. Like the Prophet says."

"He's not evil. He was never evil. He just didn't have the other half of his soul. The good half. And just what is the Prophet saying?"

"That if the wild man they have in the temple cellars is Dark Schneider then we'd all best hope that the King decides for swift justice before he strikes us all down."

"Oh, Goddess, and you support that?"

"I didn't say that. You asked me what the Prophet was saying."

"You know all this might be mute if it's not him. And the only way to find out is if somebody who knows him goes to see him. And I've got to get the King to agree so Angelo will let me do it. Now take me to Larz, Linden."

He did, not quite happily. The guards at the door to the royal study were not thrilled to have her intrude upon their master's meeting. Geo Note looked up from a cup of tea and frowned darkly at her. Larz, sitting across from him, merely lifted a dark brow with a look that said he had expected her intrusion earilier. 

"Lady Yoko."

"Your majesty." She didn't pause between the respectful bowing of the head and her plunge into the room. "This is ridiculous. Why can't I see him? If it's not him, great -- good, then everyone's mind will be set to rest. If it is, then who else is going to be able to talk to him?"

"Yoko." Father repremanded her for daring to demand anything of the king. 

"It's all right. I understand you were a bit distraught last night, Yoko. You seem a bit distraught now. Your father is advising patience on my part concerning what they have at the temple. Which is most certainly wise advice if it is my old adversary. He is never to be taken lightly -- regardless of state of mind."

"I wholeheartedly agree." Yoko said, trying to sound reasonable. "But don't you think it would be better for all concerned if I were to go -- and if it were him -- maybe talk a little sense into him."

"My daughter does seem to have that ability with him." Geo Note added. 

"I'm aware. But Angelo reports that he is beyond reason. That he rakes at the walls like a rabid animal and screams jibberish into the air. Angelo suggests that this time, when he came back to life -- he came back without human reason."

"Then -- then all the more reason why I should be allowed to see him." 

"The city is up in arms. They demand retribution for the dead -- for the descecration of the holy temple. Good men are dead. What should I do about that?"

"How can you try a man without reason? Isn't that a point of law in Meta-Rikan? That a man who cannot reason cannot be tried for crimes he commits."

Larz opened his mouth, then shut it. He chuckled and inclined his head in respect of her rational. "Very good. Perhaps you ought to be a litigator, Yoko. All right. The three of us know him. So why not make the trip to the temple and have the Prophet show us the mad man in his cellar?"

The black iron door with its small square of grill just above her easy eye level stood like an omen at the end of the narrow dark hall deep under the temple. Two levels underground, and it was cold and moist and smelled of mildew. Straw littered the floor to seep up some of the moisture, but it couldn't keep it out of the air. Yoko had on a light cloak and still she shivered. Six guards walked among them. Two king's men and four Basilica guard, one of them being the Prophet's captian, Sinakha. Yoko felt tiny and powerless crowded in the walk surrounded by armed men. Her father was behind her, as was the king and the Prophet who was a frowning presense. Captain Basilica looked through the grate, then motioned one of his man to put key to lock. The door swung open and Sinakha and his guards moved into the cell, lanterns held alouf, casting shadows about the stark corners of the little room. 

Yoko stood in the door, searching the shadows. There was certainly no where to hide. Nothing but a drain at the center of a stone floor that sloped inward towards it, so that refuge, human or otherwise might flow towards it. There in the far corner, a huddled form. Legs were curled up against the body, arms wrapped around them. Head ducked to knees. Rags barely covered flesh. There were few enough of them and they indeed looked as if they had been rotting for years. It was the hair that made her close her eyes a moment and breath a sigh of relief -- of sudden panic. More white than silver, it draped about his shoulders and arms in tangled disarray. 

"Rushie." She whispered and stepped towards him. 

"Lady. No Closer." Captian Sinakha warned even as the curled figure shifted, lifted his head to look up at them. Clear blue eyes narrowed, arched black brows drew down and between one breath and the next he was upon her, the closest to him. Her head snapped back from the blow he dealt her and she crumpled, dazed. He paid her no more heed, intent on attacking those behind her. Sihakha had out his club, as did his men. All she could see from her position on the cold floor was a jumbled movement of limbs. The thump and thud of clubs on bare flesh made her wince. A guard staggered back into the arms of king and Prophet. Schneider went down next to her, one arm outflung and almost touching her. Blood under his nails, and wrists encased in plain iron bracelets some three inches in width. They were upon him, the guards that remained standing. Sinakha took a pair of cuffs with a short length of chain from his belt and snapped them over the plain bands Schneider already wore. Then he grabbed Yoko by the arm and yanked her to her feet, pushing into the arms of her father. They took her from the room against her will. She cried out that it was all right. That he was only disoriented. That they needed to give her time to talk with him. But they heeded none of that. They exchanged looks over her head that said plainly they would talk later without her hysterical presense among them. That they would discuss his fate without her, when of all of them she had the most right to be there. 

He was alive. Rushie -- Schneider was alive. A saddness she had pretended wasn't there for the last three years lifted. Her cheek throbbed, her elbow hurt where she had hit the ground, but she was happy. He had not left her after all. Granted he was not exactly his most charming at the moment, but what did one expect newly risen from the grave. She sat in the Prophet's outter office with an ice pack to her cheek, the nervous aide serving her tea and cakes while the king, the prophet and her father conferred within. She curled her legs up in the chair, grinning madly and not able to stop it. A single tear made a slow path down her cheek. And once he was back in his right mind, he would make it all right again. He could do that. She had faith in him. 

[**Next**][1]

   [1]: aftermath6.htm



	6. Chapter Six

aftermath6

**Six**

It was cold and he hurt. The rage had passed along with the intruders whose voices he heard as unintelligible chatter and whose faces he saw through a tunneling vision. They had left the chains on his wrists, the cuffs just loose enough to fit over the metal bracelets beneath, but not enough to fit over the joints of his thumbs. His hands were sore and bloody from his trying. He sat exhausted, the foot of chain resting over his knee, his hands on either side of his leg. The darkness was palatable. He hated it. He recalled a place of great darkness in flashes of memory. A place of great pain and of himself sometimes the victim, more often the victimizer. He could not quite recall why or where or who. The who bothered him the most -- the realization that there were things about himself that he could not remember the first rational thought that had crossed his mind since he'd discovered himself in this dark, cold world. And that came only after hours alone with nothing to do but think in the eight by eight by eight cell. He had paced it a thousand times, shoulder against the wall to feel his way. Eyes straining in the darkness.

It seemed to him that he ought to have been able to banish the dark and the cold. All it took was a word. But that word was illusive. He sat in his corner and pondered, pulling at his hair in consternation when his memory would not cooperate with the immediate wants of his mind. It was only when he stopped thinking and dozed fitfully that the invocation came to him. He murmured it, wanting the power, needing the confirmation that he had some control over this situation. Eyes half closed, he finished the last word and waited for light and heat to flare and the latter did occur, but not as expected. A burning began at his wrists. A bone deep heat that turned rapidly painful, like liquid glass being forced through his veins. It traveled up his arms with the pumping blood and he cried out, sprawling backwards, shaking out his wrists in efforts to stop it. Through his heart it surged, a white hot searing pain that liked to rip that frantic muscle apart, then up the massive veins of his neck and into his skull. He screamed, slammed his head against the floor in a blind effort to shut off the agony. He ripped at the bracelets at his wrists, nails gouging into the flesh of his palms and the inside of his arms. They wouldn't move. They would not even turn on his wrists, almost as if they had been grafted into place.

Then the pain subsided and gradually faded to be replaced by cold made more chilling by the recent burning of his blood. Inside his mind, after-images flashed. Faces, places, exhalations of power. A androgynous, beautiful face grafted into the hulking body of a monster, mouth opened in rage. At him? Angry at him? Because he had betrayed it when he had been made to complement it? He curled in a ball and tried to shut those confusing images away, because they did not help him discover self, only made self more obscure and bewildering.

Yoko marched right past the Basilica guards at the doors to the temple. Doors that were usually open to one and all, but this day were closed, keeping the general public from the house of the High God. The bodies of the faithful were laid out in final rest, their families and friends looking over them in respected privacy. The Prophet himself would say words of eulogy before the burial tomorrow.

The guards tried to halt her, but she was not alone in her mission. Three Dragon guard walked at her back. Linden and two of his cronies. The confrontation of separate guard factions might have turned belligerent if Yoko had waited for them to sort it out themselves. She bypassed the problem by breezing past them while they raised hackles at each other, her arms full of blankets and a warm pot of food swinging from her hand.

"We're going to the cellar to see him. Get captain Sinakha if you want." She announced firmly and the guards had no choice but to scurry off in search of their captain. Her own escort crowded about her protectively when mourners turned their eyes to her in growing antagonism. Whispering that she was in liege with the devil in the temple dungeon.

She was down the stairs and to the first sub-basement level when the stomp of boots alerted her that someone in authority had been alerted. She was almost relieved to see it wasn't Sinakha himself, he spooked her, but one of his lieutenants, who was red faced and offended at her intrusion with armed guard into temple domain.

"My lady, you have no authority to go down there. His holiness has not given permission. You will have to petition his holiness or captain Sinakha if you wish to see the --- prisoner."

"I will not. He will not stay in that cell with no blanket or even proper clothing. And have you bothered to feed him?" At the man's blank look she lifted her chin disgustedly. "And you call yourselves men of the church? Animals are treated better. If you wish to come with whatever men you choose, then fine. Come. Make certain we don't spirit him away, if that's what you're afraid of. But I am going down there and I will see him warm and with food."

"But -- the Prophet is not here now. He left instructions that no one was to ---"

"Did he leave you instructions to starve him? Or see him freeze?"

The guard blinked at her. She jerked her head to indicate the passage ahead of them. "Escort me to him, then. I am under your protection."

That confused him enough to get him moving in the desired direction even before he could properly think about what he was doing, but by then, with her Dragon Guard crowding behind him, he had little choice but to see it through. She knew very well Angelo was not at the temple. It was why she had chosen this time to gather her allies and make her assault. She had seen him ride into the palace to confer with Larz. She could only imagine what they were talking about. The same thing everyone was talking about. Dark Schneider's unusual ability to cheat lasting death. They most certainly were not willing to have her input on the subject any more. Linden had confided to her that the Dragon guard was under strict order to keep her away from the king's future meetings concerning the unholy wizard in the Prophet's keeping. And she could fume about it all she liked, Linden had bluntly told her, but he wasn't breaking the king's direct orders. So she settled on something that had not yet been banned. She would have never gotten this far by herself, but with the authority of the Dragon guard behind her, she could bluff her way in to see Schneider.

The Basilica lieutenant looked through the grate on the cell door first, holding up his lantern to make certain no ambush awaited before unlocking it. He and his man went in first, clubs at ready. Linden slipped in front of her to assure himself it was safe before ushering her forward. The look on his face was surprise and dismay when he saw Schneider in his corner. This was most definitely not the grand, arrogant wizard they had known. This was a wary, feral creature that crouched in a dark corner, hair tangled and matted, lips pulled back in a warning snarl at their intrusion. In his crouch, his fingertips touched the floor, and she noted that he was still chained.

"Why haven't the chains been removed?" she demanded quietly.

"Who wants to get close enough to take 'em off?" the Basilica guard replied. She narrowed her eyes in anger and stepped forward. The guard stepped with her as a whole unit. Schneider growled and tensed.

"Stop. All of you. Just stay back and don't move. Let me."

They most certainly did not wish to heed her words, her own escort being chiefly upset with her request. She turned and fixed Linden with a steely gaze and he reluctantly nodded. She took a deep breath for courage and slowly moved forward. He did not leap at her. His muscles remained tensed and his eyes were narrow slits of black rimmed blue, fixed unerringly upon her. Four feet from him, and she felt she had gone as close as she dared. She knelt, carefully sitting the pot beside her and unfolding the thick blanket, taken from her own bed, and laying it between them. There was a simple tunic and trousers and soft boots to protect his feet from the rough stone of the floor. She laid all of these atop the blanket, pressing the folds out of the top layer with her hand, full of nerves. He stared at her unceasingly the whole time. Goddess, he is like an animal, she thought. Like a scared, dangerous animal that doesn't know whether it should attack or not. Please let him not.

She reached for the pot of food. Rice balls mixed with chunks of meat. Finger food. Linden had advised against anything that required utensils, rightly figuring that the Basilica guard would have fits if she tried to bring a knife into the cell. She lifted the clay top and the aroma drifted into the cold little cubical. She saw his eyes shift minutely, to what she held and back to her. She smiled and offered it. He didn't move. So she sat it on the floor next to the clothing and blanket and leaned forward to push it towards him. He lifted his hands, reached out towards her. She heard her guards start to move and whispered.

"Stay."

Amazingly enough they heeded her. Schneider's eyes flicked past her, gauged whether they would come at him or not, and dismissed them. His fingers grazed her hair and behind the tangled, too long bangs of his own, she saw a wonderment in his eyes.

"Oh, Rushie." She whispered and lifted a hand to touch him. It was too forward. He jerked back, eyes reverting to hard suspicion. She looked down from them, to his wrists, where she had noted the crimson of blood. Under the cuffs were the metal bracelets she had noted earlier and around them he had mauled himself as though trying to remove them. Those bracelets had not been with him when they had put him in the ground. She was certain of that.

"Yoko." Linden had had enough. His voice was tense with impatience to have her away from a potential threat. "It's time to leave."

She nodded, pushing to her feet, careful to make no sudden movements that might sit Schneider off. She back into the company of guards, and with visible relief, they left the cell and locked the door behind them, the lieutenant muttering all the while that the Prophet would most certainly hear of this infraction.

Yoko and Linden had lunch in a little restaurant on the wharf that overlooked the river that curved through Meta-Rikan's western side. Three years ago the city had stopped at the rivers edge, the water a natural defense against attackers. With the growth in population it had expanded to the other shore and bridges had been built to span the distance. They had fresh fish baked in flavorful thyma leaves and onion rolls with rice. She was paying, the least she could do to assuage her guilt over more than likely getting Linden into trouble over the incident at the temple.

"So what's the worst they can do?" she inquired timidly, picking at the remaining flesh clinging to the bones of fish.

"Oh, some unsavory duty more than likely." He seemed less disturbed over the prospect than she, which cheered her somewhat, but did not remove the sinking feeling that she was fast reaching the limits of what she could do. There was a certain point where people would stop doing her favors -- or she would become too conscious bound to ask. She needed Linden not in trouble. He was her best source in the Dragon Guard and him demoted or placed somewhere that he might not be able to help her if she truly needed it would serve neither of them.

"I'll go talk to the Prophet and tell him it was solely my responsibility."

"You have no authority over the Dragon Guard, Yoko. There's no way we're going to escape censure just because you decide to be noble. Let it fall where it may."

"No. Angelo listens to me, sometimes. He might be persuaded."

Linden sniffed. "When he looks at you, he's thinking about more than the salvation of your soul. Be wary of him, Yoko."

She blushed, embarrassed to discover that someone other than herself had noted the uncomfortably intense way the Prophet had at looking at her.

"He's the Prophet." She said, attempting to make light of it. "What will he do, ravish me behind the shrine in the temple?"

Linden shook his head darkly. "Just be careful."

"Yoko."

The voice was stern and brimming with disapproval. Yoko froze, with her hand on the handle of her door. Father stood at the outer doors of the dormitory, looking displeased. She forced a smile and lifted her head inquiringly.

"Yes?"

"What did you do?"

"Do? When?" She had not meant to be evasive, but the words slipped out anyway. She winced at the tightening of his mouth and the beetling of his thick brows.

"You will be required to account for yourself, young lady. The Prophet is quite perturbed. The king is hearing his complaint this moment."

She drew a breath, a swell of righteous anger making her brazen. "Well, he can hear my complaint while he's at it. The Prophet was certainly making no efforts to see Rush --- Schneider fed or clothed."

"I suggest you hold that argument, but swath it in a layer of respect and tell it to the both of them. They've requested your presence."

"Oh." The courage faltered. "I thought the King didn't want my input."

"You seem determined to change his mind. Come along."

Three powerful, stern faces stared her down when the finely carved door to king Larz's study closed behind her and Geo Note. Larz and Angelo sat by the fire, wine in the king's hand, the Prophet sipping tea. Father urged her to a place before them and moved to stand near the Prophet's chair. She shifted uncomfortably, hiding her hands behind her back like a guilty child.

"You appropriated my Dragon Guard for the express purpose of forcing your way past his Holiness' security." Larz did not waste time with pleasantries. "You ignored his strict orders and endangered yourself, his guard, my Dragon's all on a whim."

"A whim?" She blurted. "You saw that box they put him in. It's freezing and he'd not even a blanket. And they hadn't fed him. Since when do we treat people so?"

"Yoko!" Geo Note reprimanded her for yelling at their king. Angelo lifted a hand.

"I am willing to forgive a compassionate heart, your majesty, and truly I feel Yoko was moved by compassion. I fear more for her own safety when her compassion moves her to endanger herself."

"I am not in danger from him! He would never hurt me. Father you know that."

"Did he not strike out at you? Do you not bear the hint of a bruise on your cheek?"

Reflexively she lifted a hand to her cheek, where indeed the faint purple splotching of a bruise where Schneider had hit her remained.

"The circumstances were different. He was startled. He's not himself."

"No. He's not." Angelo agreed. "He was a thing of darkness before this -- but now, after a sojourn in hell -- I fear he is a harbinger of evil. It is a bad omen, his return to this world. A terrible prophecy of dark times to come if we are not vigilant in our faith."

"The world was ever more peaceful without Schneider in it." Larz commented. "I would imagine even his disciples would agree to that."

His disciples? It occurred to her suddenly that she had been searching Meta-Rikan for support, while the greatest allies she might have were the Lords of Havoc. "Well," she said calmly. "That might be. Why not send and ask them? They certainly should have some opinion of the matter."

Larz smiled at her with a look that clearly revealed he knew what she was thinking.

"Not just yet. I'd prefer to have the matter resolved without having the three of them attempting to strike down the city walls and decide the matter for us."

She took a frustrated breath. "Then that brings to mind the question; what's to prevent Schneider from doing it himself once he comes to his senses and takes offense at his treatment at the hands of his Holiness? Has anyone thought of that, yet?"

"My dear, the High God has the power to quell even the most demonic of powers. Believe me when I tell you the evil is bound by the faith of the holy."

"How?" She pictured the cell and the door outside it in her mind's eye, trying to recall if there had been runes of binding engraved in the stone. She remembered nothing. She could not recollect sensing any great magic and she was particularly receptive at picking up on that sort of thing. The one thing that had seemed out of place and unfamiliar were the bands on his wrists and the gouges in his flesh around them, as if he had been mad to get them off.

"The bracelets?" she said.

Angelo smiled at her, impressed at her alacrity. "Holy wards. Very old relics from the following of the High God across the sea. Very powerful. No demonic power will pass beyond their wards. His magic is bound. It is only the temptation of his presence that will endanger us. As long as he is here, in this mortal plane, to work his mischief, then all the pious are in danger."

"He is not without supporters." Larz said. "As Yoko has pointed out, if word reaches Gara, Nei and Kall-Su, then all of that might be a mute point."

"You can't hide it from them." Yoko cried.

"Men are dead because of him." Larz reminded her.

"And the world is still in one piece because of him too." She snapped back. The king lifted a dark brow at her tone, but she was too frustrated to back down.

"And what do you propose?" Larz asked her.

She couldn't come up with an answer.

"Shall I assign you the task of going to the families of those dead men and explaining that there will be no justice?" He asked.

"I don't know." She shook her head. "He was wild. Mad. You said it yourself. He did not do it on purpose."

"No, if he had done it on purpose half the city would be smoking ruins." Larz remarked. "So we ask ourselves, is it better to have a mad Dark Schneider on the loose or a sane one with evil intent creating chaos in a world that has just recovered some of it's sanity?"

"That's only if you believe what the Prophet says about him. He's not some evil fetch from hell. I know it."

"If only we had your faith." Angelo said gently. She wanted to smack the benevolent smile off his face. How could he look so angelically pure and sit there casting accusations of demonic conspiracy at Rushie? And the King was listening. The King was so attuned to the Prophet's words she might as well have been talking gibberish. Even Father seemed swayed. And the only people that could help her were so far away as to be unattainable.

"But you don't." She said quietly, thinking. Desperately thinking of what she might do gain time and access to Schneider. She had to appear to bend to their way of thinking most of all. Has quell their fears of her doing something foolhardy and stupid. "And maybe I have too much faith. But he was better, when I brought him the food and the blankets. Perhaps we'll know more if his rational returns. If I could talk to him -- if you could talk to him, then we could discover if the Prophet is right. I think perhaps, If I could see him again, if I could make him remember me -- then it might benefit us all."

"No." Father said firmly, but the Prophet held up a hand.

"Perhaps it might not be a terrible notion. Perhaps it would serve us better if he were sane enough to declare his allegiance."

He owes allegiance to no one. Yoko thought, but did not say. Be it hell or heaven.

But that was okay, if Angelo thought he might get such a vow from Schneider, as long as she could get in that cell to see him.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath7.htm



	7. Chapter Seven

aftermath7

**Seven**

_I hate this. This featureless dark. This boredom. _

He sat in his corner, with the blankets she had given him wrapped about him, and pondered his existence. He contemplated the word I , as if it were some wondrous and foreign term that had suddenly unfolded to him a world of new possibilities. I denoted an awareness of self that he had not, up to a few hours past, possessed. An animal did not think of nor refer to itself as I in any manner of its instinctual existence. It merely was. I signified something of a higher nature. He was intrigued by the gradual perception of something more to his patterns of thought. Something behind a chasm of --- darkness -- of void without a name, that if he picked at enough would surely come to him. It was just a matter of finding the proper thread to unravel the whole thing. He put the clothes on the girl had brought him. She floated in his memory a face in a sea of faces that held meaning that was just out of his reach. But closer. He wished she might come back again, with her sweet scent and her luminescent eyes. If he saw her again, he might recall a reason for the tracks she left in his mind.

When the door opened and light cast its invasive fingers into the cell, blinding him, it was not her. A man stepped into the room, one other man behind him, holding a lantern. White robes brushed the floor and a red silk scarf hung about his neck. On a chain was a gold emblem. This was not a face that brought memory with it. It was lined about the mouth and eyes, with hair grew sparser with each passing year. The eyes were deep and brown and at first glance not as diverting as the odd green ones of the large man behind him. That man did hold a place in memory. Recent memory concerning mindless flight and final confrontation in a storm drenched alley. He fixed the face of that man in his mind for future reference. There was debt to be paid there and in his new awareness of self, he found a taste for vengeance.

After a moment, though, there was little in the lantern bearer's face but a vigilance to protect the other, so he turned his eyes back to the white robed man. Those brown eyes had not wavered from their gaze at him. The expression did not alter. He stared back, lifting his chin defiantly. His own eyes flashed, transparent in his emotions, hiding nothing of his thoughts. The brown eyes reflected nothing but quiet fortitude and as moments passed, the animal part of him began to sense a subtle, terrible power behind those eyes. An old, old power that in some minuscule part of him, did strike a cord of familiarity. His hackles rose. Carefully, with a rustling of chain, he placed his fingers on the floor, to balance himself should he have to spring up.

The man took note of the slight movement. One side of his lips twitched, as if satisfied. Then he turned without ever making a sound and glided out of the cell. The green eyed guard pulled the door shut behind them, taking the light with him. All but a faint glow that seeped through the small grate on the door and receded as their quiet footsteps echoed down the outside hall.

He shivered. It was a long while before the tenseness left his body.

She knelt before the great shrine in the temple, head bowed, hands clasped in pious adoration of the High God, mouthing the ritual words that asked for guidance and protection against evil. The Prophet had suggested she do so, to ward her soul against temptation by the dark powers. It had seemed a prerequisite to his cooperation -- to his good will, so she meekly agreed. Her mind wondered while she knelt and her gaze took in nothing of the marble floor or the ornamentation of the shrine. The words that came from her lips were habit and nothing more. She could have uttered them in her sleep, having grown up the daughter of a priest.

She finished her prayers and rose, knees stiff from so long kneeling on the hard floor. She had brought more food. It sat on the wooden bench behind her and she retrieved it before signaling to the Basilica guard who was to accompany her downstairs. There were more of them waiting below, to protect her -- or see that she did nothing to violate the security of their impromptu prison. She walked amidst them meekly, counting on their good report of her demeanor to insure that future visits were allowed. That had also been a condition of Angelo's. She gave in to them all, willing to say and do anything to achieve her goal. The capitulation seemed to please him. He had a weakness for the humble.

They opened the cell and let light into the cold darkness. Schneider seemed not surprised by the intrusion. He sat, legs crossed, back against the wall, watching the door. He did not even blink at the onset of light. She hesitated in the doorway, guards behind her, waiting to follow her in. She wished they might stay just outside the door, but that too had been a requirement. She would not be alone with him, ever.

Steps forward, that echoed on the stone floor. A smile that wavered on her lips. An offered bribe of food. And his eyes never wavered from her, except once to watch the migration of her guard into the room behind her. They clustered at the open door, clubs in hand.

When she was close to him, she knelt, and placed the pot on the floor between them as she had before. She looked for the old pot and found pieces of it against the far wall, shattered. She would have to clean that up before she left, so there would be no censure from Angelo.

"Hello." She said very quietly, wishing her voice to travel no further than Schneider, but knowing that the guards would catch parts of it, the cell being too small for privacy. "Are you better, today?"

He stared at her, unwavering blue eyes under tendrils of silver hair.

"It's so terribly cold in here. Do you need another blanket? Warmer clothing? I can bring either next I come." She gazed at him hopefully, searching for that spark of recognition.

"I brought dinner. Pork and vegetables with sesame. I know you like that. You shouldn't have broken the pot I brought before. They'll get angry."

She picked at her cuticles nervously, and talked. Just talked. She spoke of the summer before and the summer blossom festival that had taken place on the plains between Meta-Rikan and Judas and been attended by people from every province in the south. She talked about the wedding of Princess Sheela and Prince Haden, and the tragic events preceding it. She told of Gara's appointment of Lord Protector of the eastern mountains and of Arshes Nei's terrible lassitude.

"If she knew you were alive, she would be so very happy. So would Kall. He hides it better, but he misses you too. He won't come back here because -- because of things that were said during the wedding week. That's what Gara says, anyway. I wish he would. He cloisters himself away in the north and won't let anyone close to him -- again gossip from Gara. Gara says even his commanders are wary of him, he's grown so moody."

She sighed, disheartened by the lack of response, glanced behind her to see how impatient the guards were becoming, to gauge how much longer they would let her stay.

"Father is starting to pester me about marriage. He wants grandchildren. He's afraid he'll die and leave me with no one to protect me. I keep telling him I can protect myself. I could join the Holy Swords and none of them ever marry. Gods know I trained enough when I was younger."

"Lady." Her time was up. The guards had had enough of the cold and the boredom of watching over her. She sighed, pushed the dinner pot, which he had not touched closer to him and prepared to rise.

Something flickered in his eyes. One hand lifted, the other following by rote of the chain connecting them and reached towards her.

"Don't." It was strained, as if he were not familiar enough with words to utter it with confidence.

She froze, eyes wide, both hands on the floor in preparation of pushing herself up.

"Rushie?" She whispered. Finally, emotion crossed his face. Confusion, frustration. He shut his eyes and pressed a hand to his face. As sometimes happened with Yoko, emotions and images and feelings of others came to her. She felt the confusion. The dawning of memories. He was remembering her as she had been at fifteen and himself not as Schneider but as Rushie.

Tears formed in her eyes.

"Do you remember?" she whispered. "Please remember."

"Yoko?"

She cried out and hurled herself at him, startled him so badly that he slapped his head against the wall in shock, before he put his hands on her back, at first hesitantly, then with sudden fervent intensity.

The guards closed in, she felt their presence; felt his reaction to their approach in a stiffening of muscles.

"Please." She cried. "Back off. I'm okay." She lifted her head from his chest and looked back at them. "Please."

They hesitated, but came no closer, laid no hands upon either of them. It was enough for the moment.

It came back in jumbled bits and pieces, the life before the death. Faces and places. Arguments and great battles. Lovers . . . .oh there had been a great many of them. 400 hundred years of things; some clear as photographs in his mind, others so distorted as to be unreal. Perhaps they had been. Perhaps he had not been a whole being during the majority of those 400 years. Perhaps Ansasla had been too much in his mind, its purposes his purposes. He recalled the god of destruction very well. It flared in his memory like a stabbing finger of accusation. He pushed that away with effort, trying to focus on other things. He recalled his name, which was in itself a great triumph, and recalled other names he had been called over the years. But, Schneider was the one he called himself. The Dark was an honorific that terrified peoples had added to it during his reign of conquest. He rather liked it.

She called him Rushie. He liked that as well, or at least the part of his soul that was newborn and good did. The part of his soul that had been missing for most of his life. From her lips anything would have sounded good. He remembered the smell of her hair. It was the same. As was the feel of her small, slender body pressed against his. A thousand images of Yoko flashed behind his eyes. The girl. The woman. Laughing, furious, determined, jealous -- devastated.

"Yoko." He said the name again, into her hair, as if to reaffirm it.

"Ohgoddessohgoddessohgoddess." She cried.

"Lady Yoko?" One of her guards moved forward, frowning, backed by two of his fellows. "Your time is up."

She shuddered. Schneider drew his brows, indignity that they dared to interrupt at so crucial and miraculous a moment rising within him.

"Leave us, or a curse upon you all." He hissed the warning and their eyes widened uncertainly. They knew him, it seemed, better than he knew himself. They backed away, clustering at the door, whispering among themselves. One of them ran down the hall outside, steps receding into faint echoes. It was enough.

"Where have you been? You were dead. We all thought you were dead."

He barely heard that; a muttered plea against his chest. He thought it was not so good a place, where he had dwelled. A year. Ten years. A hundred years. Time had no meaning where he had been. Pain, and terror and all the sins man might ever conceive did. And he had been cast there, into hell -- not a victim and not a conqueror. The powers that be in that realm were ever so jealous of their dominion and ever so spiteful of those that would not bow down to worship it. They had quite hated him.

"It doesn't matter. Not here."

He ran his hands down the length of her hair, down the curve of her hip and back again, marveling at the feel of her. Half thinking this was some hellish delusion that would be ripped away from him. If it was there were certain demons who would pay. There were spells of his that worked quite nicely in the pits of hell.

Spells. He lifted his wrist and looked at the band beneath the manacles. He vaguely recalled attempting a spell and the unexpected results. He knew the feel of a ward, but this was different. Oddly all encompassing and muffling in its range. Binding wards shackled magic from being summoned, but they did not generally hinder awareness of the patterns and the current of magic. He felt deaf and insulated. The world was usually bursting with the invisible scents and flux of magic, but now he felt nothing more than the dullest of mortal men. It was no small bit disconcerting, to find oneself back in the world of the living, cast in a dank little cell by sniveling churchmen, and he was certain they were that by the righteous superiority in their eyes, and without a shred of magic to set things right.

"Who put these abominations on me?" He asked.

Yoko shifted her head to see what he spoke of. Her eyes widened in dismay. She tried to sit back but the chain connecting his wrists prevented her, so she pressed hands against his chest and leaned back to the limits of his circled arms.

"The Prophet. I didn't know -- I couldn't have stopped it, if I had. I'm sorry."

"You know what they are?"

"Binding wards. Against magic."

"Hummph. I could burn any normal ward to a cinder with hardly an effort. These are decidedly not normal."

"He said -- the Prophet said that they're holy relics. That the power of the High God is imbued within them."

"The High God my ass. Who in hell is this Prophet?"

"This is not the place for blasphemy." She chided. "At least not so loud. We'll both get in trouble."

"Trouble? Trouble?" He lifted his hands over her head so he could jab a finger at her. "Whoever put me here is going to see more trouble than he could possibly imagine. I'm going to reduce this whole place to a pile of smoking stone. I'm going to turn this Prophet into ash."

"And how are you going to do that? With those on?" She lifted a brow at him, pursing her lips smartly. "Are you finished raving?"

He glared at her. No one but Yoko had ever habitually fussed and snapped at him without finding their heads separated from their bodies. "I do not rave."

"You most certainly do. Do you want to hear what happened or not?"

He stared at her. She stared back unflinchingly. There were dried tear streaks on her cheeks. She looked entirely kissable and he hadn't kissed a woman in what seemed a very long time.

"In a minute." He snatched her by the tunic and pulled her against him. Forced a serious and hungry kiss past her parted lips, until desperate for breath she pushed away. He smiled at her lazily, satisfied at the rosy blush on her cheeks and the flustered look in her eyes. He put his arms back around her back and pulled her against him. She settled to a more comfortable position between his legs and asked.

"Do you want to hear what happened?"

"I can think of better things to do?"

She rolled her eyes. "With the guards standing just outside the door?"

"It's been a long time."

"Behave." She wiggled to dislodge his fingers from straying down her behind and between her legs. She had no idea what effect that had on certain parts of his anatomy, but then Yoko had always been ignorant of her own desirability.

"Larz is king now." She started.

"So the old man finally died and his pompous son took his place. Bound to happen sooner or later."

"And he strongly supports the Prophet."

"He always was a prude."

"The Prophet is the man whose power you're in."

He didn't say anything to that, so she continued. "Four nights ago I went to your -- grave. It was the third anniversary of ---since you'd died. There was this terrible storm. It looked like lightning had stuck your gravestone and -- you were gone. Do you know what happened? Did you make it happen?"

He shook his head, totally blank on the whys and wherefores of that phenomenon. He had no memory of attempting to break back into this world, at least not recently. In fact memory of everything he had been doing of late was gone.

"I don't know all the facts, but -- but they say you were mad. That you killed a man in the streets and that when the temple guard tried to bring you in, you used an Exodus spell and slaughtered about a dozen people."

"They put hands on me." He said slowly, dredging up twisted, narrow memory. "I don't recall the spell -- but if they dared to touch me, then they deserved it."

"Rushie." She cried. "That's not true. Some of those men weren't even guards. Some of them had nothing to do with it. The whole city is up in arms."

"And what might you suggest I do about this cry for justice?"

"I don't know. You weren't yourself -- I keep telling them that. Maybe if you apologized and let them know you're back in control."

"Apologize? I'm sorry, have you mistaken me for someone else?"

"Ooohhh, don't you have a shred of sense? You are in trouble here and unless you can get past those wards on your wrists, you're not in a position of power. Sometime a little humbleness goes a long way."

"For you maybe. I don't do humble."

"You do asinine quite well." She snapped.

He grinned down at her, loving the angry spark in her eyes. "You are so beautiful, Yoko."

The anger faded. Her lips trembled, an invitation he could not resist. She kissed him back this time, wrapping her arms about his neck. She tasted of honey and spices, and the soft flicker of her little tongue was ecstasy. Her moan of pleasure the music of enchantment that had not a thing to do with magic.

"Yoko!!"

God. That voice. That damned stern, righteously shocked voice that had her jerking backwards so sharply against the chains that she bruised his wrists. Geo Note filled the doorway, his broad face filled with a few more lines, the brown in his hair fighting a loosing battle against invading gray.

"Father." Yoko scrambled to extricate herself from Schneider's arms. Schneider glared sullenly at the Great Priest.

"You have lousy timing, old man." He muttered and got an offended stare from Geo Note.

"Yoko, what were you doing?" The father demanded.

"I wasn't doing anything." The daughter cried guiltily.

"She was doing quite well before you got here." The defiler of innocent young woman assured them both. Yoko cast him a glare.

Then the guards behind Geo Note moved to let another man into the cell and all Schneider's lazy insolence evaporated into tense, deadly concentration. He recognized the man who had come to his cell earlier this very day. The intense eyed priest who had stared at him silently, gaugingly and left him without a word. That man set his hackles up and triggered alarms that very few men or monsters triggered.

Yoko's Prophet. It could be no one else. The Prophet stepped just past Geo Note and the Great Priest half way inclined his head, as if in respect. Oh, that was a telling stroke. That the former high priest of Meta-Rikan bowed to this new religious zealot, told a great deal about the way things were now. Three years, Yoko had said. Quite a lot of change for a mere three years.

"So the madman has regained his senses." The Prophet said, the traces of a smile touching his lips. Schneider hated him immediately. "Dear Yoko, you were so correct in assuming your presence would bring him about. Well done, my child."

Yoko trembled, bowing her head as if ashamed, which ignited Schneider's ire.

"She's not your child."

The Prophet arched a brow at him. Geo Note lowered his. "Yoko, come here."

"But, father. . . ."

"Girl, you agreed to certain things you ignore them, first chance you get."

"What things?" Schneider demanded. "What sin has she committed? Could be anything with your lot of pious asses."

"She was not to come into contact with you." The Prophet supplied. "For her own safety."

"Oh, its not her safety that's in question, priest." Schneider tilted his head, a feral smile crossing his lips.

"With you, all godly men are in danger. Your presence in this world has always been an anathema to the holy."

"Get over yourself."

"Your rise from the dead only proves how the dark powers of hell favor you."

Schneider laughed in genuine amusement. "If you only knew how untrue that statement is. Enough of this drivel. I'm tired of this cell and I want these wards _OFF_."

"The desires of the unholy mean nothing to honest men."

He almost rose in fury at that, but Yoko turned on him and kept him back with a touch of her fingers on his arms and a pleading, frightened look in her eyes. She mouthed the word _PLEASE_ . With a frustrated growl he subsided, fists clenched, wishing to call a spell to strike the lot of those smug faced priests and priestly minions down in their tracks. A tingle of pain went up his arms and he winced, blocking the desire for magic, having no wish to be emasculated before these holy assess.

"Yoko." Geo Note said sternly. She looked at him a moment more, a promise that she would not desert him in her eyes, then rose and marched over to her father. The Prophet smiled down at her and there was in his eyes a proprietary glint. Schneider narrowed his own eyes.

"Perhaps you should take lady Yoko home, Great Priest." The Prophet suggested. "We shall all talk of this later."

Geo Note nodded his agreement and herded Yoko through the guards out of the door. She looked back once before she was swallowed by the shadow outside. Which left Schneider alone with the Prophet and his guard. The big, green eyed one who had been with him before leaned against the door frame.

Schneider rose to his feet, not wanting to kneel in this man's presence. "Do you have any notion of the pain and agony you're inviting by keeping me here?"

"Pain and agony are the torments of the wretched sinners. The pious man endures suffering knowing that it will end with the glory of heaven."

"Oh, God."

The Prophet stepped forward, quick as a cat and backhanded Schneider. If he had not been so surprised by the act, he might have avoided it. "Do not utter the name of our lord, you foul spawn of hell."

Schneider lifted his hands, gingerly touching his face. "My suggestion to you," he said slowly, carefully controlling the tremble of anger in his voice. "Is that you just kill me now. Otherwise, you are going to beg to the devil for mercy because your _GOD _ will be in no position to grant it to you."

The guards shifted, willing to move forward and silence the blasphemy, but the Prophet lifted a hand. He leaned in towards Schneider fearlessly. "And what would you know of god, you motherless abomination?"

There was something in the eyes, something in the inflection of the voice that made Schneider start and blink in sudden recognition. But it faded as quickly as it had come and he stared at the Prophet warily, wondering if there were more to this man than some dusty religious Zion.

The Prophet smiled and pressed his hands together as if in prayer. "But, the High God is benevolent and wishes to forgive when forgiveness is truly desired. Think on your sins, my son and perhaps one day you might find absolution."

Schneider sniffed and lifted his hands. "Whatever. Do the chains have to stay. As you say, I'm not quite mad anymore. Isn't the cell enough?"

"Oh, quite. Sinakha, please remove the manacles. I trust there will be no further outbursts of violence."

Schneider shrugged, then as the Prophet turned to leave him, he whispered. "By the way, she's mine. So whatever little plans you had in mind, you can forget."

The Prophet paused a step, not looking back, then he continued towards the door.

[ NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath8.htm



	8. Chapter Eight

aftermath8

**Eight**

"Is it true?"

Yoko had barely escaped from her room and the stern lecture her father had delivered, when the cloaked, furtive figure of Princess Sheela apprehended her on the garden walk outside the cathedral dormitory. The Princess stood half behind a trellis of roses gone stalky and bloomless in the beginnings of winter. A fur lined, green cloak half hid the contours of her face. Tendrils of long, black hair escaped the cowl and the eyes in the shadow were huge and desperate. Yoko stopped four feet from the sister of her king, the muscles in her jaw working spasmodically. Too many days of tension had her nerves and her tolerance at a breaking point. What she saw in Sheela's eyes, what she had always seen in Sheela's eyes when it concerned Schneider set her teeth on edge. She could not forget that this woman had known him in a way that she -- despite all his declarations of love for her -- never had the chance to. This woman who had always had everything had pursued Schneider when she had known Yoko loved him. It had never been malicious and he had certainly been an instigator -- as he instigated quite a few liaisons with women who caught his eye, but with Sheela who had once been Yoko's childhood friend, it grated more. She would never wish the Princess harm -- it was not in her nature to let jealousy turn her spiteful, but she would also never be friends with Sheela again. Not with him between them.

Yoko pushed a strand of hair behind her ear, taking a breath to collect her poise.

"Yes." She said simply.

A soft release of breath and the princess lowered her lashes, murmuring a silent prayer. "I heard so many rumors. So many terrible tales. I was afraid to ask ---"

"Yes, I imagine your husband would be irked if you showed too much interest in a former --- lover." Yoko hated herself for saying after the words left her lips. Goddess, this whole situation had made her snappish and short.

Sheela stared at her, large dark eyes brimming with liquid. Goddess, don't let her start crying. Yoko was most certainly not up to comforting her.

"Yes." Sheela whispered. "You're right. He's a good man, but protective of me. I -- don't wish him to be hurt."

Yoko nodded, swallowing. "I'm sorry. I'm tired. Sleep hasn't come easily of late."

"How -- how is he? They say he's mad."

"He was. He's better now. Still mad, but more of the angry sort."

"How did it happen? How did he come back? We were assured there were no spells of resurrection or rebirth cast."

"I don't know, Princess. He doesn't remember. It doesn't matter."

"No."

Sheela looked down, as if she didn't know what else to say. Yoko chewed at a nail, having the sudden thought that though Sheela might not be her crony, she might very well be an ally of Schneider's. An ally with the ear of the king.

"The Prophet keeps saying that he was sent from hell to destroy us. I'm afraid he's going to persuade the king to do something horrible to him."

"All those men that died -- I've heard."

"It wasn't his fault. He reacted blindly to them attacking him. He wasn't in his right mind. Do you think Larz might listen to you, if we tried to convince him of it?"

The princess twisted the edge of her cloak nervously, looking across the garden square to the lights of the cathedral. Her silence made Yoko desperate.

"I know you don't want your husband to think you're interested in another man, but --"

"I'll do it. I'll talk to Larz. Tomorrow, I'll take lunch with him. Come as my guest. We'll make him understand."

Yoko let out a sigh of relief, closed the distance that separated them and took the princess's cold hands in hers. There were some things that even rivals could agree on.

"Thank you."

She dressed formally for the luncheon in a skirt and overtunic, an ornate belt cinched about her waist. She met the princess outside the royal wing and the two of them descended on the east garden solarium, where the King liked to take his mid-day meals, together.

Larz looked up from the table and the pile of parchment he was leafing through, saw Yoko in his sister's company and lifted one dark brow.

"Well, strange bed fellows. Let me guess what brought the two of you together."

Sheela blushed. Yoko was past embarrassment and merely curtsied as any proper subject of the king would in his presence. Be humble, she told herself. Humble will get your further than brazen and demanding.

"I don't suppose lunch will be a peaceful affair, then." The king predicted, waving them over.

"I see no reason why it shouldn't." Sheela said, settling into a gracefully curved rod iron chair. Yoko followed suit, folding her hands demurely in her lap. Larz waved at a servant who went off after their lunch.

"How has your morning been so far?" Sheela asked sweetly.

"Terrible. There are bandits along the west coast that are harassing merchant ships and its damn slow work rebuilding war ships to fend them off. I believe the demolishment of the seaboard kingdom's navy can be directly attributed to Lord Kall-Su when he was rummaging about the south a few years past."

"He was under the influence of Ansasla." Yoko murmured in defense. "It was not his fault."

"Ah, yes. And you would be a great defender of those not responsible for their actions this week, wouldn't you lady Yoko?"

"Oh, Larz, be nice." Sheela reprimanded. "Just because you're in a bad mood this morning, don't take it out on Yoko."

He lifted a brow at his sister. "Oh my and here I had heard rumors that the two of you were at odds since Dark Schneider's first reawakening. What is one to think when you join forces?" he leaned forward conspiratorially. "Don't be too obvious, Sheela, or your husband -- dull as he is, will become suspicious."

"Larz!" The Princess glared at him.

The servants entrance with a cart loaded with food hindered any further castigation Sheela might have delivered. There were sautéed shrimp over a bed of greens drenched in a citrus vinaigrette, thin slices of pork with a sweet gravy, seasoned rice with bits of vegetable and a mushroom mix rolled and fried in a thin, salty pastry. Light and elegant fare and Yoko had no taste for it. There was about Larz a certain hostility that had nothing to do with the state of the southern alliance, and more to do with his assumption of what case they were here to plead. Certainly one expected no love between the king and Schneider, the two of them being enemies of a deadly sort. On the occasion of their last traumatic encounter, Schneider ending up trapped in the body a newborn and the Dragon Prince reincarnated into, appropriately enough, a dragon pup. It took over fifteen years to rectify the both of those situations.

"All we want," Sheela said, when they had all pushed plates away and the servants sedately cleared the table. "Is a little bit of fairness."

"Fairness? And what, prey tell, would you have me do for Him, that I would do differently for any other man responsible for the deaths of -- I believe the tally is up to fifteen good men?"

"But no one speaks for him." Sheela said.

"On the contrary, he has the two of you."

"Neither of who is a litigater and besides which, it seems that it is the church who is the accuser and the church who wishes to hand out the punishment. Since when are murders tried by the church?"

"Since the murderers are spawns of hell, your highness."

The Prophet strolled down the solarium walk, hands hidden in the folds of his sleeves, a serene smile on his face.

"You have no proof of that." Sheela cried.

"He's back from hell. Is that not proof enough, Princess?"

"He's a great wizard. The things he does can not be judged by the standards of common men."

"Ah, and of what is he a great wizard of? Holy magic. The white power granted us by the benevolent gods we worship? No. He is and has always been a child of the dark hegemony. You say he can not be judged by the standards of common men. You are right, my child. He can only be judged by the holy standards that he and his kind abhor."

"He was wild when he first came back." Yoko said quietly. "You know that. You saw that. We all did." She cast a look to Larz for confirmation. "So you can not deny that what he did might have been done with no more thought than an animal gives to defending itself. If he killed those men, it was not intentional."

"Even unintentional murder demands penance." Larz reminded her, at which Angelo smiled and took the remaining chair that the king offered.

"The people demand justice be done." Angelo said. "They pray for it daily. I pray hourly for some solution to this dilemma, my dear." He reached out and patted Yoko's hand.

"I strive to seek some manner in which forgiveness might be offered. Some sign that he has a soul that might be salvaged."

"He has a soul." Yoko whispered.

"Ah, you speak of the part of him that you grew up with. The boy, Rushie, whom it seemed was the moral side of Dark Schneider. How do you know that part of him survived hell, my child? That evil place is anathema to good."

"You don't know that it didn't."

"Only Schneider can answer than question."

Yoko blinked and looked up at him, grasping for a slim chance. "And if he did. If he did prove that he's not evil. What then?"

"Forgiveness for his magnitude of sins could only be achieved by complete denouncement of his hedonistic ways. Of a declaration of faith in our god and an unanimous agreement by an ecclesiastic tribunal that it was uttered in good confidence."

"You're not serious?" Larz stared incredulously.

Angelo smiled. "Oh, but if what the lady Yoko says is correct, that he meant no real harm with his actions, that he does indeed have a moral soul hidden within him -- then it would be remiss of the church not to give him the chance to amend his ways. It would be remiss of me, as Prophet of the High God, not to personally attempt to salvage a soul. But it must start with him."

He turned his eyes to Yoko, who was staring at him wide eyed, speechless. His hand squeezed hers.

"Do you understand, my dear? He has to will forgiveness. He has to declare his willingness to change his ways and submit himself to the mercy of the High God. It's the only way mercy might be granted."

Schneider couldn't stop laughing at her. She stood, with the uncomfortable presence of her father behind her and the Basilica guards outside the door and blushed furiously while he sat against the wall and laughed until tears leaked out of his eyes.

"It's not that funny." She complained, glancing back to make certain her father had a adequately supportive look of seriousness on his face.

"It's hilarious." Schneider contradicted her, wiping at the corner of his eyes with a knuckle. "I haven't heard anything so amusing in -- in I don't know how long. Ages. Decades at the very least. They want me to bow before their ridiculous god and pledge my faith? They want me to plead for forgiveness from the likes of that ass Larz and his pet Prophet. I'd as soon beg it of you, Great Priest and we all know how likely that is."

"Then you will likely revisit hell sooner than you think." Geo Note said. "For between the Prophet's declaration that you are a minion of hell out to destroy all good men and the outcry for justice over the murdered men -- I've the feeling they'll see you burn."

"Oh, will the witchfires grace Meta-Rikan again? I thought that persecution had ended fifty or more years ago."

"You are sooo stubborn." Yoko cried, stomping her foot in agitation. "This is serious. The teachings of the Prophet have the people scared silly of any magic not ordained by the church. Mother's scare their children into obedience with tales of dark magic. Stories about you."

"Oh, they've done that for years."

"Well, it goes further now. They've chased the hedge witches out of town. The shops that used to sell charms and wards have been banned by public outcry. People are so wary of magic now, that the whole town is terrified at the rumors that you've come back."

"As well they should be, considering my warm welcome." He glowered at her, at her father behind her. "Believe me when I say if it weren't for these damned bracelets -- there would be hell to pay."

"Then perhaps the Prophet is right." Geo Note said. "Perhaps we are all safer with you gone."

"Most assuredly, he is."

"Rushie!" Yoko dropped to her knees before him. "They want to burn you or drown you or whatever they do to witches and hell beasts. You can't stop them. He's taken your power. Can't you get that through your thick skull?"

"I understand that they want me humbled. They want ME to beg forgiveness for something I don't even recall doing. I don't do the begging thing, Yoko. You should remember that."

"Ooohhh. I remember how stubborn and asinine you are."

"What are a few moments of retribution when your life is at stake?" Geo Note asked.

"I'd rather die."

"Then you probably shall. Yoko, we've done what we can. Let us go."

"No! Damnit, no. You will listen to reason if I have to cram it down your throat." She leaned forward and screeched at him, slamming the heel of her hand into his chest to accent each word. "I don't care if you would rather die. I won't have it. Do you understand? I can't go through that again."

Schneider caught her wrists to stop the pummeling and held them between them. "It is not as easy as you make it out to be, Yoko."

"What? You're saying the great Dark Schneider is incapable of doing something? That it's beyond you?"

He looked past her to Geo Note. "You'd just as well that I did die, wouldn't you, old man?"

"If I did, I would not be here with my daughter. I do not believe what you sacrificed for us should be repaid in this manner."

"You don't have to mean it." Yoko said desperately. "What's a little lie and little contriteness if it will get you out of here?"

"They won't believe it." He let her wrists go, reached out to catch a lock of her hair and rubbed it between his fingers. "Would you believe it, Great Priest, if I came to you and professed a sudden love for your hypocritical religion? If I told you how sorry I was for -- say, wiping out your army at Gudara? Why should this Prophet be any different? Why would Larz, who even if he is an ass, is at least a smart one, buy a word of it?"

"I wouldn't believe you." Geo Note agreed. "But, then I'm not the Prophet. I don't have the ear of the High God . . . "

"As if he does."

" . . . .and most importantly, I don't have wards on your person preventing you from using your vaunted powers. Whether you like it or not, you are at a disadvantage here. A very great disadvantage, and I might suggest you learn to deal with the situation from that perspective. He will believe you, because he has the power to force the issue. And for once, you my friend, do not."

Schneider's sullen glare was not so much for Geo Note as for the bitter truth of the words he spoke. Oh, it galled him, Yoko knew very well it galled him to the core not to be able to magic his way out of this cell and the power of the Prophet. He leaned his head against the wall, mouth a tight, angry line. There were faint bruises on his face. A scratch running down one finely crafted cheek. The scrapes he had made on his own wrists were crusted with dried blood. He could have healed it all with a whisper had he access to his power. In frustration he slammed his skull against the wall. Once, twice and Yoko reached out to touch his face, leaning in to press her cheek against his.

"What's one little lie? If you fool them, then you'll still be the winner. Please, Rushie."

Against her hair, she heard his low agreement. "All right. For you, I'll do it."

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath9.htm



	9. Chapter Nine

aftermath9

**Nine**

He did not expect it to happen so soon. He expected, as with most things bureaucratic or ceremonial, that it would take days, if not longer for them to arrange it. He had expected to have a little time to prepare himself emotionally for the trauma of pretending to be humbled. It was not a thing familiar to him. He could not quite ever recall a time when he had ever bowed down to any man, god or demon. It was not in his nature to be that flexible. Men bowed to him. They begged him for forgiveness. He was frankly amazing that he had let Yoko talk him into it, but she had powers of persuasion over him that no one else did. That part of his soul that had been harbored in the boy Rushie those fifteen years could not deny her. And the rest of him followed suit.

So he found himself agreeing to act the penitent and bow to men that he truly held a distaste for. He found himself not quite in the right frame of mind for meek behavior when the door to his cell slammed open and guards filed in. He expected to see Yoko in their midst, bringing his supper, but the only one who stepped forward was the guard caption with the odd green eyes.

"On your feet." Was the rude request. The man stood over him with the obvious and quite deluded assumption that his size and his impressive armament were intimidating. Schneider looked up at him lazily, his arms folded across his bent knees. "Why? Shall we dance?"

The thin lips tightened. The men behind him waited, ready to lay hands on him should their captain so will it.

"You are summoned by the Prophet and the King."

"The Prophet and the King? Well, I should be impressed, shouldn't I? Hummm, maybe it will come to me later."

"Get up." The captain made a grab for him.

Schneider bared his teeth and hissed. "You've laid hands on me once. How many times do you want to die, monkey-man?"

He pushed to his feet on his own, one graceful movement that had him staring the guard captain -- was his name Sinakha? He had to remember that for future missions of vengeance -- in the eyes. The man stood just an inch or so taller than he did, but he still managed to stare down his nose at him.

"So what now?"

Sinakha's lips twitched, as if some hint of a smile were trying to burst past the perpetual frown. It was just enough of a warning saying that this was not a man who brooked insolence or disobedience. That this was a man who took great gratification in instilling discipline when the chance occurred to him.

He was also damned quick for a big, brawny man. Gara would have been hard pressed to match that speed. Schneider who had always been more inclined to rely on his vast magical prowess, although he was an excellent swordsman, just saw the fist coming, and could not quite connect the awareness and the reflex of stepping out of the way fast enough. Sinakha struck him on the side of the temple. A glancing blow that did little more than spin his head about and momentarily cause bright lights to dance behind his eyes. Sinakha did not give him time to recover. Sinakha was good at what he did. A hand caught Schneider's shoulder, spun him around and slammed him against the wall. While he was gathering breath to curse, the man clamped a manacle about one wrist, captured the other and fastened his hands behind his back. A very talented man. An expert at dealing with unwilling people.

Schneider did not even bother to reiterate on the promise of a long and painful death. He glared from under his lashes, concentrating on calming his furious breath. Sinakha caught him under the arm and started him walking. Past the eyes of the guards, some of whom looked properly wary, others who smirked at the manhandling. Through the door and into a dark hallway that he had no memory of transgressing the first time. Up a narrow stair, where he stubbed his toe, a reminder that he had no shoes, which was a damned embarrassing way to meet his enemies. Shoeless and in the plain, homespun garb Yoko had brought him; dirty, with his hair a tangled, pale mess down his shoulders and back. Street venders dressed better. It was an affrontage to him, who had a taste for fashion.

Up a second level, a place for storage by the looks of it, and out a door into a hall where windows looked down from above. Nighttime shown through the panes. Torches guttered along the walls. He heard the muffled murmuring of a crowd through stone walls. More guards joined them, and Sinakha thrust him into the keeping of others while he went to confer with the newcomers. The guard captain's frown deepened. He motioned for several of his men to go ahead, then came back and took charge of Schneider again.

"Problem?" Schneider asked maliciously, hoping something terrible plagued the temple.

"You." Was the curt answer. Sinakha began walking again. A brisk stride that had them at the doors at the end of the hall in short order. They were opened for them and beyond was the tall ceiling and cavern like space of the main shrine. The sound of voices suddenly amplified with the open doors. A sea of angry faces turned towards them. The guards pushed forward, moving the closest folk out of the way. Cries went up, spreading throughout the temple. Cries of Murderer and Demon Spawn and Dark Schneider.

Sinakha's fingers tightened on his arm, he yelled for his men to make a path for them, but people pressed against the guards, screaming for his death. Calling for the witchfires. Peasants, rabble, the poorest of the poor among the plain garbed folk that made up Meta-Rikan's middle class. They all clustered together in their common cause. His destruction. He was somewhat shocked by the fervor and the boldness of the crowd. He was feared and hated, he knew that, it could hardly be avoided after his years of conquest while he served the purposes of Ansasla, but the common folk had never dared to scream their hatred to his face. Had never ventured to attack him physically. What, by all the demons of hell that they accused him of serving, was the Prophet preaching to them?

A woman pressed against the living barrier of guards, red faced from crying, waving a black scarf at him furiously. "Murderer. You killed my husband."

He stared at her blankly, as Sinakha hauled him through the press, thinking that he very well could have. Out the great central doors of the temple and there was a crowd barely restrained from becoming a mob on the street. There were priests on the steps, calling for people to be calm. To let them pass and those priestly forms were the only thing that kept violence from erupting. It certainly was not the guards who barely held the line towards the heavy coach that sat at the bottom of the steps.

Into it and he was sandwiched between Sinakha and another guard, two more taking the opposite seat. The door slammed shut, cutting out the torch lit faces, but only barely managing to dim the shouts and accusations. It rocked into motion, slowly forcing its way through the crowd. The high pitched scream of a horse from outside and the progress faltered. The coach swayed, as the crowd pressed against it from all sides.

The Prophet and the king did not scare him. Hell had not particularly frightened him. The god of Destruction, Ansasla had not been a thing to quite inspire fear, but he found himself unnerved by this crowd of common folk, who against all their good sense, were attacking a wizard that, had he possessed his powers could have destroyed them all and their city along with them. But he didn't have the magic. And for the first time it occurred to him that being torn apart by a angry mob was not the heroic demise he might have hoped for on his third time down. And what -- terrible thought that it was -- if he did die and went to hell again and somehow those damned wards on his wrists went with him? Being at the mercy of the things that lurked in the depths of hell was not a pretty notion. He shut his eyes and wished for the coachman to get his equine charges under hand and get the coach out of this hate filled square.

With great difficulty it did, rattling over cobblestones and picking up speed once it had cleared the mob outside the temple. The guards breathed sighs of relief, but did not speak among themselves in Schneider's presence. His sense of direction was sorely skewered. He had nothing more than vague memories of his initial flight through the town, and no earthly notion of what building he had been imprisoned within. It was a great church, he had seen that on his harrowing trip through the shrine, but he was aware on no great church save the Cathedral within Meta-Rikan and yet it took no long coach trip to reach the palace, if that was indeed where he was headed. He had no intention of inquiring of his guards. But, soon enough the coach slowed and was hailed from without, and then passed over what sounded like a wooden bridge. One of the bridges that led to Meta-Rikan castle. The door was opened and Sinakha nudged him to get out.

The weathered facade of Meta-Rikan castle faced him. The courtyard was orderly and free of the mulling folk that had littered the temple steps. Only royal guards at their posts, who looked on the temple guards with the fine air of superiority of men upon who's territory other men tread. Dragon guard met with Basilica and captain's exchanged words. Sinakha would not give up custody of his prisoner, so the Dragon's joined with the temple security and together marched him into the palace proper.

They stared at him, the Dragons. He might have recognized a face or two had he not been dwelling so intently on the indignities he had been subjected to on the one hand and on the other seriously doubting his ability to act the humble supplicant. He could not for the life of him imagine what good it would do him. No matter how much faith Yoko had in the benevolency of her religion, he had little doubt that this was no more than some devious ploy on the part of the church. Or more likely this Prophet, whose very presence made him wary. What was it about the man --?

Down halls he vaguely recalled, past clustered servants and a stray courtier or two. The great doors of the throne room stood closed, but watched over by two guards in full dress regalia. They opened them on cue as the procession approached.

There were people in the great chamber beyond. A great many people lining the walls, peering around each other in efforts to see the entrance. Nobles and priests -- god, there were an over abundance of priests -- ladies in all their finery. Military men in their finest uniforms, sparkling with medals and honors. All turned out to see him. Wryly he thought he ought to feel flattered.

He lifted his head, shook his hair back from his face and paced down the carpeted aisle leading straight to the throne, before Sinakha could lay hands on him and force the issue. They whispered about him. In awe, in fear, in reminiscence, in speculation. Once again, Dark Schneider was the center of their dull little worlds. He reveled in the attention. A lazy smile touched his lips, a predatory gleam burned in his azure eyes. He ignored all the petty faces of the people lining the way to the dais. They were nothing. Except for Yoko, who stood not too far from the dais, before her father. She he noted from the corner of his eye. Saw in that haphazard glimpse, frightened eyes and pale skin.

But he hardly had the time to focus on her, not with Larz sitting on the high backed, stone throne and the Prophet standing one step down to his side. Larz he had a problem with. Larz, he would always have a problem with, the pretentious ass having managed to defeat him twenty years or more ago, with the very great aide of The Great Priest, Geo Note and his circle of clerics. Schneider had a tremendous problem with being bested, which came from not having it happen very often. The only consolation was the fact that Larz had not exactly survived the battle either, whiling away the years in the form of a dragon pup.

He stopped ten feet away from the dais, proper court etiquette. Sinakha stopped a few steps behind him, and the other guards melted to the sidelines. A thin, imperious smile touched his lips as he met his old enemies eyes. Larz wasn't smiling. Larz looked rather disgusted, but he sat his father's throne with his back straight and his face composed. Off to one side, his heir and sister, Sheela stood beside a mousy haired man, who wore the circlet of some petty kingdom about his brow. Leisurely, while they all waited for someone to break the tension, he let his eyes rake over her familiarly, just to annoy Larz and the man next to her, whoever he was. She blushed.

Larz finally lifted a hand for silence and the flutters of whispering ceased with an expectant intake of breath. Schneider lifted a brow.

"There are charges brought against you, Dark Schneider." Larz never had been one for beating around the bush, which considering how annoying the blooded nobility was, had always been a trait Schneider had found appealing in him. One of the few. "Charges of murder and collusion with the dark forces of hell. Fifteen men of Meta-Rikan lie dead from actions of yours. The Holy Prophet of the High God, Angelo, claims that you are an agent of Satan and should be treated as such. What say you?"

Oh, that was to the point and completely righteous and full of the justice Larz always had thought he ought to be the one and only to deliver. Schneider had to take a moment to force the bile of swallowed pride down his throat before he could speak. From the side of his vision he could see Yoko mouthing the words she wished him to speak.

"Fifteen?" he asked, his voice echoing in the complete silence of the hall. "I seem to recall one -- who attacked me in the storm. He deserved it. The other's I don't quite remember --- but, of course I regret any innocent life that was taken from action of mine." Which was a totally crock of absurdity, considering the multitudes of deaths he had been responsible for and remembered quite clearly, that the lot of them did not seem to be upset over.

"But," he added, before Larz could respond to that vaguely patronizing rendition of an apology. "Shouldn't any atonement be made to the poor widowed wives of the dead, instead to a hall full of nobles who could care less if a town full of peasants lived or died -- unless it meant profit to them?"

An agitated whisper swept the room. He heard Yoko moan_ nonononono_, from the side. Larz drew his brows in displeasure and the Prophet -- if he was not mistaken, the Prophet almost smiled before he wiped the expression from his face and dutifully frowned

"This is not a court -- yet, to decide your innocence or guilt, or what price you might pay for the crime."

"Guilt? Isn't that a rather broad term, considering?" Schneider flared back, interrupting the King to the dismay of his court. He felt Sinakha's presence close in on his back, and stiffened, waiting for that man to lay hands on him, which here, under all these eyes would be intolerable.

"Of the guilt we have no doubt." The Prophet's smooth, orator's voice broke into the friction flaring between Larz and Schneider. His face was the picture of calm serenity. His smile took in all the court, drawing their trust like sand soaks water. God, there was something about the man.

"What is in doubt is your right to stand among us as a mortal, human man. If indeed you are a spawn of hell, then any lawful standards a true man might be entitled to -- are bereft you."

The court listened to the Prophet as if the man had them hypnotized. Behind him, Larz focused on his every word. The priests in the crowd looked positively orgasmic. The Prophet moved down the steps of the dais, his staff of office clicking on the stone. Schneider stared as rapt as the rest, only his fascination came from some inner rasp of recognition. The face and the body were unfamiliar, but there was something else -- something in the words he spoke, in the look in his eyes -- that itched and scratched at Schneider's memory. And no recent memory. No clear one at all. Something long, long ago that just needed the right hint to come back to him.

"We hope and we pray that it is not so." The Prophet lamented. "If you have a soul, then We will strive for its salvation. If you do not -- then you will be sent back to the hell you came from."

"And how would you know?" Schneider asked softly. The Prophet came closer. Sinakha laid hands on his shoulders, as if afraid he might go for the man, chained as he was. He might have, if he had not been so enticed by the fluttering hint of recognition.

"No spawn of hell could willingly pledge itself to the High God. A spawn of hell would burn if it kissed the holy ring of the God."

Another step closer. He extended his hand, upon which was a gold signet ring with the symbol of the High God carved into a blue stone.

"Kneel." Sinakha hissed in his ear, a moment before he deftly kicked at the back of his knees, collapsing his legs. He went down with a snarl, the guard captain's fingers hovering over his shoulders to keep him down should he start upwards. In his memory, Schneider had never knelt before another man in supplication. No matter Yoko's pleas that this was the only path to eventual freedom, he could not tolerate it. He clenched his fists so hard his nails bore into the flesh of his palms. His vision tunneled dangerously and he felt a tingle of pain from the wards about his wrists as the magic reflexively stirred to his very great desire.

The hand with the ring was before his face. The Prophet looked down upon him, his eyes glinting with an inner light that suggested -- excitement. Thrill at the adoration of the crowd, of the submission of a man who he knew very well was being forced into the act. And he used his god as leverage for all of it. He used his god for an excuse to lord over the faithful and crush the unfaithful. At the word of his god he might destroy the world. It was a familiar tune. Schneider had played it himself in the past, when Ansasla had held control over some part of him. Then it occurred to him that before the destruction of the old world, he had known a man like the Prophet. He had seen that look and that fervent wish to be god's prophet on earth on a man of religion. On a man that had welcomed Ansasla and the entities that had summoned it, because he wished to remake the world in the name of god.

"I know you." Schneider whispered.

"Declare your acceptance to the High God's will."

"I know you! You fucking sick bastard. I know you!"

Sinakha grabbed his shoulder, his hair when he tried to surge to his feet, yanked his head back and put a knee in his back. The court was murmuring in agitation. Yoko was crying for him to stop.

"Do you refuse to accept the salvation the high god offers? Or can you not because you are truly a creature of hell."

"You would know, you hypocrite. You've no more traffic with the gods, than the pig you ate for dinner. I guarantee there's a place waiting for you in hell and you can converse with your god there, for you surly have no contact with it on this plane."

Priests cried out in horror at the blasphemy. Sinakha hit him hard, with a fist or an elbow on the back of the head and drew back to do it again, but the Prophet lifted his ring hand to stop it. Schneider hissed and swung about, slammed a shoulder into Sinakha, taking the captain's moment of unbalance to gain his feet. He got no further than that before Sinakha and others of his guard were one him, grasping his arms, his hair -- to hold him immobile. The Prophet leaned close, reaching out and lifting a stray strand of silver hair, rubbing it between thumb and forefinger, smiling slightly into Schneider's fury.

"Do you? Know me? Or do you merely think you do, heathen creature. Your time in hell has not served you well if you stand shackled before the church today. Your demon master will not have one more servant to wreck havoc upon the world of good men."

"No man or demon is my master. Who are you?" He ground out the words, hating the man's hands on him, not able to shake it because of the guards holding him fast.

"I am the prophet of the high god. And he tells me that it is my duty to try and save your black soul by breaking the vessel that holds such evil. You will be cleansed and saved."

Schneider laughed. "You can't save me. The gods don't listen to you anymore."

"Oh, but I can." The Prophet touched his cheek, a grazing of knuckles against flesh that made him flinch. Then, the fingers moved to his forehead and rested there. The Prophet's eyes rolled up in their sockets and he threw back his head, crying out for divine support in his crusade. It was almost laughable, until a lance of white pain shot through Schneider's head. Pain that quickly turned to numb disorientation. His strength fled. Awareness dulled to a tiny pinprick of light and fuzzy vision. His legs gave out and he collapsed back into the arms of his guards.

Vaguely he saw the Prophet standing over him, arms thrown out as if in supplication to the heavens. A miraculous thing happened. Through the dark, heavy stone of the throne room ceiling, a ray of white light shone down, haloing the Prophet in it's pure glow. The crowd cried out in awe, people fell to their knees in reverence. And Angelo, the Holy Prophet of the High God, stood with a secret smile on his lips and satisfaction in his eyes.

Images drifted through his mind, unbidden and unwelcome of the time before. As with most of his memories of that time, they were blurred and disoriented, more like the imaginings of a fever dream than the recollections of a sane mind. He recalled the world when it had been different. When it had been filled to bursting with people and their machines. When the cities that now lay as nothing more than eerie ruins in the bad lands had been shiny and new. He had only vague memories of his own arrival in this world -- it seemed as if one moment there was nothing and the next he was thrust adult and powerful into a world that blithely overlooked such things as magic and the hidden powers that were destined to bring about its destruction. He might have known what he was summoned for then, but the knowledge had fled him not long after the Destruction. He knew it had to do with Ansasla and the powers that had brought the god of destruction forth, but more than that eluded him. He remembered men in that old world that had worked secretly to herald the coming of Ansasla. Abigail had been there, as old as he or older, always watching and influencing from the shadows. And another. A mortal man, who held sway over the beliefs of the multitudes, who believed that his god had chosen him to lead the righteous to the path of salvation. A man who believed that the coming of Ansasla would destroy the wicked and elevate those of his belief. A man who believed he was favored of the angels of god and at their word, worked at the downfall of his civilization.

His name had been Devin Angelino and he had been a priest, risen in the ranks of his denomination to the highest office possible. A pious man who hid his own dark passions under the cloak of religion. Schneider remembered hating him then, too.

He woke with a start, muscles flinching spasmodically from the shock of having a spell of some import being rammed through his skull. His head pounded, feeling swollen and huge. He saw bright, flashing lights in the darkness he opened his eyes upon. He shut them and the vision was exactly the same. Nasty, nasty little subtle spell, the Prophet had used upon him. No particle of power had escaped outside the touch of skin to skin to alert any magic sensitive observer that power had been called at all. It was not a spell he was familiar with, but then again, he had never been particularly interested in secretive demonstrations of power.

Gingerly, he shifted, and heard the rattle of chain. Felt the restraint of manacles still on his wrists, but this time fastened to the front and attacked to a length of chain attached to the wall. Black, cold cell. He had no notion whether it was the same one he had occupied or not. There were none of the comforts Yoko had brought him, at least within easy range. He tried to sit up, and regretted it as his head swam and nausea rose in the back of his throat. He rested his cheek against his knees miserably until the queasiness passed and his head cleared enough to reason.

Angelo. Devin Angelino. The latter had been an old man. An old catholic theologian, who thought the world needed a cleansing of all who did not practice his own beliefs. A man who had too much mortal power, and just a touch of supernatural. A man who had been given magic to impress upon him the favor of god's angels, when they, after all was said and done, were only using him. As they had tried to use Schneider. Devin Angelino had begged for the honor to be their tool and he had, in the end, hated Their chosen vessel, never mind that Schneider had rebelled against their plans for him. Not that it mattered in the end. Nothing could stop Ansasla from devouring the old world and all the monuments it had built. Devin Angelino had supposedly shared the fate of most of the world. For over 400 years Schneider had forgotten he ever existed. He almost doubted it now. It was not the face or the figure of the man he had known. The power he sensed in this man had not belonged to the Devin Angelino of old. Not even close.

And yet. The essence was the same. Only more twisted on the inside and smoother on the out, as if four centuries of working to control the path of man's faith had given him ultimate powers of persuasion. If the Prophet was indeed Devin Angelino, then Schneider had no doubts that every detail of events since his reawakening had been orchestrated and planned to reach this point. For if he recalled correctly, Angelo had always been a man to carry a grudge. Always been a man who planned meticulously. And he had just managed to put on a show that convinced the court that Schneider was a minion of hell, thus preventing any jurisdiction of the crown from the matter. And he had played right into the Prophet's hands. He cursed himself and his temper, but most of all, he cursed the name of Devin Angelino. The Prophet of the High God.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath10.htm



	10. Chapter Ten

aftermath10

**Ten**

Yoko was in a frenzy. The whole of the castle, it seemed was a bee hive of gossip and speculation and righteous indignation over the contempt the Prophet had received when he had striven his best to offer a hand of friendship and benediction. It was abominable. It was of course to be expected from one such as Dark Schneider.

Yoko felt herself go stiff with anger every time she heard an uninformed, snide opinion on what ought to be done with the demon spawn the church had taken under its guard. Oh, and he was under the temple's power now. Fully and irrevocably after his little performance in front of king and court. The fool. The great, prideful fool!!

Father wasn't talking to her. He was playing the part of the betrayed, as if he had personally been injured by Schneider's outbursts. As if his reputation was bruised because he had encouraged leniency. Maybe it was. Yoko hardly knew anymore what to put her faith in. All she knew was, they had dragged Schneider's limp body away under very tight guard, and the nobles and the priests had called for the witchfires to cleanse Meta-Rikan of his foulness. And shock of shocks, it had been Angelo who had calmed the cries for reprisal and convinced them all, king included to let the church try and save the soul, if not the man.

She found she did not believe his words anymore. She found suspicion in what her own eyes had told her when that light from heaven had pierced the throne room ceiling. She found herself thinking dark and blasphemous thoughts concerning the Prophet and his High God.

Of course they wouldn't let her see him. She was not entirely certain where they had taken him. When she marched up the steps of the Temple, the guard calmly took hold of her arm and led her to a small side chamber where captain Sinakha held his offices, where she was informed that she was not allowed anywhere in the temple but the shrine and if she did not obey those rules then she would not be allowed in the temple at all.

She went back to her rooms and pressed her face into her pillow, trying not to cry in her frustration. Her options were becoming more and more limited. Sheela was not taking visitors. Her husband, if one were to believe the whispering of maids, had not been pleased with the familiar look Dark Schneider had gifted his wife. There had been arguments, the maids said.

Yoko was in fear of hearing that witchfires had been lit and herself too ineffectual to prevent them. She had spells at her call, but hers were mostly healing and defensive magics, those condoned and taught by the church. She could not by her self, overcome a mob, or the determined guard of the Prophet. Which led her to ponder that she dearly needed the assistance of those who could. Of those that did have a voice that could not be ignored by king and court.

She went in search of Linden. Found him in the Dragon barracks, playing dice with a comrade and pulled him away from the game. He went with her, off duty and out of uniform, long dark hair pulled back in a tail at his neck.

"Were you there?" she asked, when they walked the streets below the castle, out of the range of prying ears.

"No. I heard."

"I'm afraid, Linden. It's like they've been building up this hate for so long and all it took was Angelo to set it on fire. They'll kill him if they can."

"He brought it on himself, from what I heard of it."

"Goddess, Linden, he brings everything on himself, but this time he can't fight it and they're cutting off every source of support he has."

He said nothing, stuffing his hands in his pockets, watching his boots take step after step. Yoko stared at his profile, desperate for some sign of support.

"You followed him once."

"I followed the Samurai Resistance. We just happened to strive for the same goal."

"He achieved that goal."

"Yes. Without him we would all probably be dead now."

"He needs our help."

"What more can we do?"

"Get Gara."

Linden turned dark eyes her way, face stretched with surprise. "Gara's in the East." He said slowly.

"I know. I don't think the Prophet or the king would let me send a messenger. Why invite trouble, they say? I need someone to go to him that they don't know about."

"Oh, Goddess, Yoko. Do you know what you're asking? I would loose my place in the Dragon guard. I would be court marshaled for desertion."

"Gara would protect you. Schneider would, if we free him. I would take the blame."

"You couldn't. We've been over this."

"Linden, I don't have anyone else. I know I'm asking a terrible thing of you -- but I don't know what else to do. They're going to kill him."

"Yoko ---"

"Please, Linden. Gara has to know. He's my only hope."

He stopped in the street to stare at her, his face stricken, but she thought, touched with the hints of grudging acceptance.

Time passed. He was not quite certain if it had been a day and a night or two. It might have been more. The darkness gave up no clues as the passing of time. He had his hunger and his thirst to tell him that more than a reasonable amount had gone by without benefit of water. Then ears sensitive to the slightest sound, since they were all he had to rely on in this black pit, picked up the sound of footsteps and the grating of a key in the lock of his cell door. Not the same cell, he thought, for the light from the lantern did not spill through a grate in the door. Only when the heavy portal creaked open did the yellow illumination grace the harsh lines of the cell.

His eyes rebelled at the light, pupils shrinking in sudden discomfort. He turned his head away marginally, lowering lashes in no particular mind to show interest in his visitor. He knew it wasn't Yoko. The sound of the steps had not been hers. Therefor it was an enemy of his. When his sight adjusted he saw that the guard captain Sinakha had hung a lantern from a bracket by the wall and moved to stand by the door, waiting for his master who stood in the portal to enter the cell, before he himself stepped outside, closing the door behind him. That left Schneider alone with the Prophet. Angelo. Who stood staring down at him with his hands hidden in the folds of his sleeves, his face, as always touched by the serene hand of the truly faithful.

"So is it you?" Schneider asked, sitting comfortably against the wall, holding the chains near the ring where they were attached.

Angelo lifted a brow. "Do not presume to know me."

Schneider laughed. He seemed to recall Devin Angelino saying something similar so very long ago. "It is you. Where have you been all these years? Why don't you wear the same body?"

"Oh, you seem to know everything else, why not the answer to that? The Prophet comes from across the sea, from the west to spread the word of the High God, haven't you heard?"

"Humm. No, I was busy conquering the world -- or being dead. The little things tend to escape attention. Like what you've been up to Devin."

"Don't call me that." Angelo stepped forward threateningly. Schneider tilted his head, interested in the weak spot he'd found.

"Why not? It's your name."

"It is the name of a man who was betrayed."

"You were betrayed? That's laughable. I thought it was the other way around -- you handing the world to Ansasla in return for your own personal power."

Angelo hit him. A stinging slap at the first, then a backhanded blow on the return. He crouched over Schneider, knotting his hair in one hand, pulling his head back and grasping his jaw with the other. A tingle of power went through his fingers into the core of Schneider's skull. He ground his teeth against the pain, refusing to cry out, even when it seemed his brain was about to explode.

"Don't ever mention that again in my hearing, you thief. You murderer." Angelo whispered, close to his ear, when he had let the pain drift away. "You took the glory that should have been mine. They gave it to you, when they had promised it to me."

"They used you, you moron." Schneider ground out. "They gave you petty power to placate you and you danced to their bidding."

"Liar." Again with the pain and this time Schneider's body rebelled, trying to jerk out of the Prophet's grasp. The chains prevented him, the debilitating nature of the spell stole his strength. He called Angelo the foulest string of names in his vocabulary and the Prophet's fingers strayed over his eyes and god god god the agony turned into a lucid and living thing. All he saw was red with the white hot center of pain.

He came back to himself sprawled on the floor with Angelo's perched over him, knee in his gut, leering down in satisfaction. "Do you know," the Prophet said. "How easy it is to take a body once the soul is broken?"

Schneider stared up at him, shaking from residue pain, at a loss to understand what Angelo was babbling about now.

"I was only gifted by god with telepathy back then, before The angels came to me. I could read men's inner sins, their desires, their truths and lies. It made me a better priest. It allowed me to reach levels of power where I could do more good. I was never born with the curse of black magic. I am not a creature created by it, like you. I am a mortal man, and unlike creatures born with the gift of magic, my lifespan is a mortal one. Only when They gifted me with the power was I able to prolong it. You asked why I wear a different body? There is a way, if the soul is broken and the spirit destroyed, to leave an old body and take a new one."

"You're a body snatcher." Schneider hissed. "You profess morality and you do that? That's an evil even I wouldn't contemplate."

Angelo ran a knuckle up the side of Schneider's jaw. "You don't have to. You wear the same face you did 400 years past. To accomplish the things I had to accomplish, to bring faith back to the world, I had no choice. But, you are right. It is a not a fate that a moral man should be subjected to. I only took the bodies of those cursed with dark magic from birth. Those born with hell's gift. And do you know that with each body taken, I gained the magic that was theirs? And kept it, even after I had moved to a new form. I've had twenty-four forms while you've held this one. Can you imagine how great my power has become with the combined might of eighteen wizards at my use?"

"I didn't use the Exodus spell that night. You did."

Angelo smiled at him. "Sometimes sacrifices must be made in the name of the god, to further His dominion."

His dominion. Angelo's dominion. Angelo stole the bodies of those born with the gift of power to further his own power. Angelo contrived this whole thing to get him within his control. Angelo wanted him. His power, his body.

"How many years have you dreamed about this?" he asked. "Getting me? The ultimate power. A body that won't age?"

Angelo leaned close. "Since the first day I discovered I could take the body of another and make it my own."

"You're going to be disappointed. I don't break."

"Oh, you will. I've become very good at what I do."

There was a period of time that he could not organize his thoughts. They scattered like puffs of pollen on a strong breeze, ripped asunder by Angelo's persistent hammering at the walls of his soul. It grew worse the more he refused to shatter. He had after all, survived admirably in hell. What earthly torture could be worse than that? Although in hell, he had not been stripped of his power. That in itself was as much of a torment as the things the Prophet inflicted upon him. Knowing that had those wards had not been fastened on his wrists, he could have blasted Angelo to hell where he belonged, no matter the Prophet's claims of having the power of twenty odd magic users. They couldn't have been all that, if they'd let Angelo conquer them. Twenty odd hedge wizards were nothing when it came down to true power. He told himself this, when the pain receded enough for lucid thought and Angelo left him in peace. And he held onto the satisfaction that the Prophet would never break him. He might kill him, but never destroy his spirit. That would gall the man more than anything else.

How many days? Four, five, since the little fiasco in the throne room? He didn't know why time was suddenly so important to him. It had never mattered before. He wished Yoko were here. She soothed him, when she wasn't yelling at him, or trying to tell him what to do. He thought of her face when the pain got to be too much, thought of her laughter and the sweet smell of her hair. He used her mercilessly as a lifeline to sanity, when he thought he might be slipping over the edge, she the truest and most pure thing in his life.

The door creaked open. He did not bother to turn and look. Just lay on his side, his head cradled on one arm, with his back to the portal. Angelo hated it when he ignored him. Angelo hated to be dismissed as trivial.

Only it was not Angelo. He heard a feminine gasp and for a fleeting moment his spirit soared, thinking it was Yoko, somehow gotten past the Prophet to see him. He rolled to his back, the effort costing pain and stealing his breath. He thought he had bruised if not broken ribs, courtesy of one of Angelo's fits in response to some blasphemy or another of his. He couldn't recall exactly what he had said to inspire the kicking frenzy.

"Schneider!" It wasn't Yoko. Very surprisingly it was a robed and jewel adorned Princess Sheela. More surprising still was the fact that her brother, Larz stood in the shadow of the doorway behind her, members of his Dragon Guard shifting behind him. His expression did not look happy at all.

Sheela dropped to her knees beside him, her face trembling with dismay at the way he must have looked.

"Oh, what have they done to you?" She whispered. She reached out to touch his hair, which was miserably lank and dirty. He hated the feel of it on his own skin. He hated being filthy and bloody and bruised. He shut his eyes and sighed, wondering how she had managed to talk her brother into allowing this sojourn. Larz, as far as he could tell was a convert to the Prophet's way of thinking. He said nothing, not trusting his voice and unwilling to show that weakness with Larz looking on. Sheela's dark eyes welled with tears. He remembered Yoko saying she was married now. Queen of Judas. He recalled her husband on the dais beside Larz. The man had not seemed to suit her. Not in regality, not in power of presence.

"Why won't you give in?" She said. "Just give up your stubborn pride and bend knee to the church? Don't let them believe you're what the Prophet says you are. What can it hurt?"

Foolish girl. As if it would matter to Angelo. He could do a thousand penance's and it would not be good enough for the Prophet, because the Prophet damn well knew what he was and what he wasn't.

She sobbed in frustration when he wouldn't respond to her plea. She leaned over him, her hair falling across his shoulders and pressed her cheek to his. "I'm so sorry."

"Sheela! Enough!" Larz gripped her shoulder, pulling her up and away from Schneider. "You're a married woman. Remember it. You've had your chance and failed. As I said you would. Now come."

Schneider fixed Larz with a level, cold glare. "You're his puppet and you don't even know it."

The king didn't dignify that with an answer, only a quick, furious glance. He walked his sister from the cell without a look backwards and the door was shut behind them, plunging Schneider back into darkness.

"Yoko, it makes no sense. Why won't he just do what they want?"

They were in a small, private shrine in the Cathedral. Sheela and Yoko knelt before a statue of the Goddess, knees protected by velvet pillows, heads bowed as if in the act of prayer. It was the only way they felt they might meet without censure. Without prying eyes and ears observing them. That it had come to this in her own home.

"Because he's a fool." Yoko whispered bitterly.

"You should have seen him. He looked so battered and weak. We've got to do something. He'll die under the church's care."

Yoko clenched her hands before her, eyes under her fall of hair burning with anger.

"He'll never give in. Not now."

"I don't understand?" Sheela's voice rose loud enough to attract attention and Yoko glanced over her shoulder to make certain no priest paused by the door to see what prayers were being recited with such vehemence. No one came.

"How bad was he?"

Sheela took a shaky breath, lashes fluttering down to cover pain in her eyes. "He wouldn't talk to me. Dried blood and bruises. Perhaps the marks of a lashing -- I couldn't see well in the cell. But -- but I've heard tell that church inquisitors don't always leave marks."

Yoko cursed under her breath, imagining those things done to him. Him. Her Rushie. And hating the people responsible. The man responsible. That Angelo dared lay a finger on him, she would never forgive.

"Gara will come." She whispered, saying a true prayer that her message would fly fast and true to the Ninja Master. "Perhaps with Arshes Nei, if she's still with him. Matters will be set right."

"If Schneider's even alive by then."

"Don't say that. He's lived through worse."

"With his magic."

She had no answer to that. She kneeled before the goddess and wished she had the faith she had at fifteen and mourned that she probably never would again.

Geo Note had, in his lifetime done things for the greater good that he was not proud of. Sometimes things were required to uphold the laws of man and god, that men of conscience found abhorrent. He knew very well that with power and responsibility came hard decisions, but even holding that knowledge close to heart, he found himself bothered by the prophet single minded persecution of Dark Schneider. He understood the reasoning. He understood the people's growing distrust of things magic after the devastation that Ansasla and its minions had left in their wake. He understood the need to give the people reassurances that the church was indeed guarding the sanctity of their souls against the blackness of perdition. But his own sect had never been one to preach the fire and brimstone messages that those that followed the High God did. He had a problem with the burning of witches. He had a problem with the torturous efforts of inquisitors to evict admissions of guilt or innocence from those suspected of trafficking with the darker powers.

He did not know quite whether to believe what the Princess Sheela had told Yoko of Schneider's condition. Yoko seemed to believe. Yoko was miserable and distraught. Yoko, who hardly ever cried, sat in her room, stone faced, with silent tears running down her cheeks. It broke his heart on the one hand and hardened it on the other. He had used her relationship with the boy Rushie, the form Schneider had been trapped in for fifteen years, to concrete a control of sorts over the wizard, yet he never had planned that she loose her heart to him. He had hoped she might share his own practicality, but he should have known. She was too much like her mother. Too volatile of emotion, too quick to judge and to give her heart. Too easily hurt. As she had been, over and over by the damned dark wizard. And still she championed him.

A week passed and she stopped talking to him at all. She hardly ate. He began to worry for her health as well as her mental well being. She sat in his study, high in the Cathedral tower and looked out the window over the new city, staring at the spires of the Temple of the High God. And he could not stand it any longer. He went to Angelo , as one holy man to another, to voice his concerns.

The Prophet received him in his office, prim and proper in his crisp robes and his holy symbol of office glinting at his breast. His smile, as always was a thing of warmth and welcome, inviting any to share in his aura of faith. It never faltered, even when Geo Note explained his reservations, questioning the wisdom of the Prophet's decision.

"I understand." Angelo said sagely. "The worship of the Goddess and her sibling gods, has ever been a more inclined to forgive and over look the things lurking in the shadow of hell, than that of the High God. Perhaps in years gone by, that inclination was not as much a danger to us. But now, with the world disrupted by the passing of the God of Destruction and the things brought over the boundary between this world and the darker one when it --- died --- my friend, we can not afford to relax our vigilance."

"Perhaps. But in this one case -- it is possible that what you see as a devotion to the powers of hell, is more pride and arrogance on the part of Schneider."

"Ah, I hear your daughter's words from your own lips, Geo Note. You let the girl's misplaced devotion influence you. She needs to be taken in hand. I mean no disrespect to you, Great Priest, but why did you never arrange marriage for her? It would have brought stability into her life. She runs wild now, without the humbleness or decorum of a proper young woman her age. She moons after a demon spawn."

"She is a pious girl." Geo Note defended.

"She is reckless and headstrong and need's a husband's guidance. She has power and cold be such a force of good for the God if only tutored properly. You have done what you can with her, Geo Note. But how much can a father truly achieve with a wayward daughter?"

"It is true. She has rejected my few proposals of marriage. I thought to give her time to get over her attachment to Schneider, but that seems an improbable thing now."

Angelo leaned forward, a light of passion coming into his eyes. "I have made no secret of the fact that I admire the girl. I find her strength of will commendable, her beauty soothing to look upon. I have taken no wife in all my years of crusade for the High God's doctrines. I would take her in hand. I would show her the path of true redemption and of true faith, if you would consent to give me her hand, Geo Note."

Geo Note took a breath of surprise, quite thoroughly shocked by this turn of the conversation. Never would he have imagined the Prophet had eyes for his daughter.

"You would marry?"

"In the eyes of the God, marriage is sacred. Let our lines be joined. It would be a marriage blessed by the goddess and the High God."

"I --I hardly know what to say, your holiness? You've taken me by surprise in this. It is a most generous offer. I will consider it. I will speak with Yoko of it. I cannot promise she will be well disposed to it, considering her preoccupation with Schneider."

"Perhaps it is time that she be treated like any other young woman of high breeding and given in the marriage her father wishes, regardless of the fancy she refuses to let go of. I will speak with the King. Perhaps with his blessing on the union, she might better see her path to duty."

"Yoko? Are you here?" Geo Note lifted his hand to rap on her door, listening for the sounds of movement within. She opened it after a moment, her face thin and strained, her hair a tumbled mess about her shoulders as if she had not taken a comb to it in days. She might not have for all he knew. Perhaps the Prophet was right. Perhaps she did need a powerful hand to guide her out of this misery she inflicted upon herself.

"Child, have you eaten today?" He stepped past her into her room. She stood at the open door, as if she did not quite know what to do with him in her rooms.

"I had an apple for breakfast." She admitted. He frowned, the hour being well past dinner.

"That is all?"

"I'm not hungry."

"Yoko, I want you to snap out of this self-destructive mood. You'll make yourself sick, if you don't eat properly."

"Father, I'm all right. Leave me alone."

He drew his brows at the rejoinder. She glared right back, one hand on the door knob the other on her hip. "Is there something you wished, Father?"

"I wished to talk reason to you, girl."

"I'm perfectly reasonable. What need?"

"I've had a proposal of marriage for you."

She stared at him blankly.

"One that I am seriously considering."

"How can you consider marriage for me?" she finally declared archly.

"By the law of the land, Yoko. You are my daughter and unmarried and therefore my wishes on the matter are law."

She blinked, then laughed. "Oh, goddess, are you serious? You've never before 'considered' such a thing. Is it because I won't pretend to ignore what's being done to Rushie? Who asked for my hand?"

"The Prophet."

At which pronouncement she caught her breath, eyes widening in amazement. Her face went white, drained of blood and the hand on the door knob began to shake. She brought it to her breast, clenched in a fist.

"And -- and what did you tell him?" Her voice was a barely audible whisper.

"I told him it was a generous offer and that I would consider it."

"You did not!" she cried at him, lunging towards him, fingers grasping the lapels of his robes. "I will not!! How dare you? How dare he? Do you think I'm some piece of meat to be sold at market?"

"He's gone to talk with the king on the matter." Geo Note managed to get in over her screeching.

"I don't give a pig's ass! The king can join the both of you in ---"

"Yoko!!" he took hold of her before she could utter that curse and shook her, hoping to bring her back to her senses. She twisted out of his grip, wild eyed and wary, then ran for the door, despite his calls for her to stop. Then she was out of it, pelting down the hall like a hunted doe, scattering a pair of priests on their way to prayer.

Geo Note stood outside her doorway, declining to call after her before witnesses, frowning darkly at the curious looks of the priests when they turned their eyes to him. They quickly continued on their way to the Cathedral. No matter what the Prophet thought about the proper submissiveness of women, this was not going to be an easy matter.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath11.htm



	11. Chapter Eleven

aftermath11

**Eleven**

Out of desperation and panic, Yoko did something she would never have done with a clear head. It was quite one thing to march into Temple with Dragon Guards at her back and bully her way past unsuspecting temple guards; and a different thing entirely to use magic to break the sanctity of a holy house for her own ends. Those were the actions of a criminal, plain and simple, and the consequences would be dire if she were caught at it. Consequences were the least of her worries. Forced marriage to a man she had come to resent and even hate held a far more prominent place. And she had no one to talk to, to spill out her fears. No one to protect her if father were on the Prophet's side. And the only man who would have was in the cellars beneath the temple, in dire predicament himself. She needed to see him. To talk with him. It was a driving desire that had her at the steps of the temple in blind recklessness, before she knew quite what she was about. 

It was then that some reason began to seep back into her brain. Basilica guards stood outside the doors, watching the passage of the worshippers into the temple. They were a new fixture on the steps of the temple, since the advent of the Prophet's demonic prisoner. There was no safe entrance that way. She veered back onto the street, walking with head down and arms crossed over her breast around to the side of the great building. The main doors would all be watched. But there were unobtrusive, little used portals that might provide entrance. To the very back of the temple, where the traffic was little or none, in an alley with refuge was stacked for the street cleaners to take away. There was a plain door in the midst of the garbage. There was no handle on the outside. It didn't matter, she knew a spell of unlocking. It was not exactly a spell designed with illegal entry in mind, and the priest who taught it to her would be aghast to know to what use she put it, but beggars certainly couldn't be choosers. She laid fingers on the door and silently mouthed the words of opening. Felt the small amount of power it took to perform such a simple spell flow into her, through her fingers and into the door. Something quietly clicked. She took a breath and gently pushed at the door. It swung inwards with hardly a creak. 

A narrow dark hall, lined with crates and boxes. She shut the door behind her and slipped down the passage. She was not familiar with the temple as she was with the cathedral she had grown up in. She hesitated at doors, listening for the sounds of people behind them. She heard the clamor of the kitchen, kitchen sounds could not be mistaken for anything else, and hurried past that door. She found finally, after a great deal of frustration, an opening that led to the great naive of the temple. She stood in the shadowed doorway and got her bearings. Across the way was the passage that would lead her to the stairs to the basement levels. Across a temple scattered with people praying, with priests passing among them, giving blessing. With guards at the entryway and no doubt more watching the door to the cellars. She wished for a spell of invisibility, but knew none. What she did recall was an incantation for inconsequence. A spell that might allow the caster to blend in with the background. She had heard Gara use it once. It was most certainly not a holy spell -- not if it was fashioned by assassins, but it might be the thing she needed to achieve her goal. 

She leaned into the shadows behind the naive and mouthed the words of the spell, praying that she remembered them correctly. It wouldn't work, Gara had said, if anyone was actually looking for you. It would only allow the caster to escape their notice if their minds were on something else. 

She said the words twice over and felt a shiver pass her body. She did not know if it were her own apprehension or the spell taking effect. She had no notion if it had worked or not. As quietly as she could, she slipped behind the alter, clinging close to the wall, and began to circle the room. No one looked up from their devotions. No priest chanced to glance towards the naive and call out to ask her what she did there. She reached the door and opened it only wide enough to slip through, then crept down the hall. There were guards by the door to the cellars. They sat at a small table, talking quietly among themselves. She froze, back pressed against the wall, breath caught in her throat. They did not look up. One suggested a game of cards. The other worried that the captain might catch them at it and report it to His Holiness. They muttered at the injustice of the duty. She silently slid along the wall. The goddess and all her kindred must have been smiling down on her, for the door to the cellar was slightly ajar, all she needed do was turn her body sideways and slip through the opening, the door moving hardly an inch in her passage. Then she was down the cold stairs, mindless of the dark, hands feeling at the stone of the walls to find her way. Dare she call a light? She heard no voices down here. No guards lurked in the pitch darkness. Maybe just a little one. A tiny speck of illumination that she could squash if need arose. 

"Illumina ." She whispered the summons. A glow no larger than a plum flared to life before her eyes. She waved a hand downwards to direct it towards the floor, where it might be less noticed. It hovered just before her as she wove through the boxes of the storage level. Then she found the steps leading down to the lower, more dreadful sub-basement. That door was locked. She opened it with a spell, feeling a bit of strain at the use of three spells simultaneously. 

With a swell of satisfaction she pelted down the stairs, down the hall to the cell where Schneider had been, only to find the door open and the cell devoid of occupant. She stepped inside, saw the pile of blankets she had brought to him, rumpled and unused in a corner. She let out a little whimper of frustration, for the moment devoid of purpose. What if he was being held in the castle dungeon? She could never get past there. What if he were dead? No. Not dead. She would know it. She knew she would. And Sheela had said he was in the Temple. Another cell then. There were many doors along this passage. Closer to the stairs? No, further. As far as they could get him from escape and warmth and light. She went down the hall until it narrowed and sloped downward. The walls were rougher, hewn from stone and not yet smoothly finished. The doors were further apart, thick and metal. She went to the furthest one and pressed her hand against it. Murmured the opening spell and pushed it open. Nothing. Water puddled in a dip against the far wall. The smell of mold was overpowering. She shut the door with a shudder. Moved to the next. Pressed hand and ear against it and thought -- no. It's not this one. The next and she felt a stirring. She caught her breath and magiced it open. 

The little ball of light proceeded her inside. He lay against the wall, as if it were his only solace, wrists fastened by thick chain to a ring four feet from the floor. He uncurled at the intrusion of light, made to push himself to his knees and she cried out inarticulately and rushed forward, skidding to her own knees on the stone before him, throwing her arms about him before he had the chance to fully gain his balance. He went over, caught the chains to prevent the topple to the floor and could not quite hold his weight and hers. She ended up on top of him, tangled in the chains, sobbing his name against his neck. 

His fingers grasped after her hair, pulling her back enough so that he could see her face. His own was haggard and bruised. But his eyes were sharp.

"How did you get here? Did they let you come?"

She shook her head, sniffing back tears. "No, I snuck past."

"You used magic." He accused harshly and she blinked at him, bewildered to have him censure her, of all people. 

"Yes .... but ..."

"I could feel it. If I could feel it then HE could."

"He?" she shook her head at him, not understanding. "I had to come. Oh, Goddess, everything is going so badly. I don't know what to do."

"Get out of here is what you do." He pushed her away, wildness in his face. She fell backwards, and he struggled up, holding to the chain for support. 

"But -- I don't understand."

"Yoko, get out before he finds you!"

"I'm afraid it's too late for that." 

The gentle, smooth voice of the Prophet echoed in the tiny confines of the cell. Schneider snarled. She cried out in dismay, staring up at the tall figure of the Prophet from her sprawled position on the floor. The large figure of captain Sinakha stood behind him, green eyes aglow in the illumination of her witchlight. 

"Yoko, I am very, very disappointed in you." The Prophet stared mournfully down at her. "I had such high hopes for you, my dear." 

Under his gaze, she rose guiltily to her feet, held her chin high and met his stare. "I demand that you cease this, at once. It's not moral or holy."

He reached out, gripped her shoulders and his fingers bit down into her flesh so hard she winced. "You may demand nothing, girl. You've given up that right." He shook her once, hard enough that her head snapped back painfully.

"Don't touch her!" Schneider hissed, lunging forward, only to be brought up short by the chain that fastened him to the wall. 

Angelo looked past her at Schneider, lifted a brow caustically and said. "It is time Yoko had discipline in her life. It is time she learned to pay for her mistakes."

A dozen foul names spewed from Schneider's lips. Yoko blanched, suddenly afraid of the hate in this room. Schneider's, The Prophets -- goddess save her -- her own. The Prophet thrust her into the hands of Sinakha.

"Take the young lady to my chambers. I will deal with this trespass there shortly." He smiled. He smiled when he should have been frowning darkly at her transgression and that scared her more than anything else. 

He was on his feet, pulling at the chains in a rage to get at the object of his rancor. The hate welled so strong inside him, he felt disjointed and out of control. Angelo merely watched him, just out of reach, that infuriating smile on his narrow lips. And Schneider raged and threatened and promised horrible, horrible vengeance if the man laid so much as a finger upon Yoko.

"A finger?" The Prophet said, lifting a brow. "Didn't you know. Her father and the king have consented that I take her as bride. A finger will be the least of the things I lay on her."

He roared his rage, yanking against the chains until he felt the flesh bruise and tear at his wrists. "I'll kill you. I'll turn every ounce of your stinking flesh into ash. Goddamn you!!"

"I've told you not to take the name of god in vain." Angelo's lashes fluttered down. He whispered a word and force slammed into Schneider's body, racked him with a pain too brief for it to be one of Angelo's tortures, then snapped back into the Prophet, taking every bit of strength Schneider possessed with it. His legs gave way, rubbery useless things, and he collapsed to the floor in a jumble of limbs he had no energy to straighten. He hardly had the will to breath, to blink his eyes to clear them of reflexive tears. 

Something changed in Angelo then, the intrinsic benevolence that he always wore in his guise of Prophet evaporated, to be replaced by a cold and calculating maliciousness. The door the cell slammed shut behind him, as if by a strong gust of wind. The light from the lantern outside in the hall that they had brought with them was obliterated, and a new, harsh light grew about the Prophet. He crouched over Schneider, twining silver hair in his fist, eyes gleaming in a madness that was usually so very deeply hidden. It roared like a blast furnace now.

"Why do you continue to deny ME?!!" He screamed down, spittle flying from his lips. "It's for the greater good of all men. How can you not break?"

Schneider's lips wouldn't move to utter all the things he wanted to fling back into Angelo's face. All he could do was lay there under the weight that shifted over him and endure. 

"You will regret it, I tell you. You will pay for this insolence. I have marked the things you love in this world. I have. Before you ever even came back from hell, I marked that which you held dear. That girl. The Assassin. The dark elf. The Ice Lord. You were nothing before They called you out of the eather. Nothing!! And yet you thought you were so much better than the rest of us mortal creatures. You took what was rightfully mine!! Ansasla chose you, when I had been promised that honor. They promised me, damn you!! Then you murdered it. You killed it, when for so long I had waited for it to be reborn and to choose me for its purposes." 

Tears streamed down the Prophet's cheeks, fell onto Schneider's face. He wanted to cringe away from them. Wanted to scream back at the madman that what he had wanted so badly, what had been thrust upon Schneider all those centuries ago had cost him 400 hundred years of free will. Had cost him any goal but the destruction that Ansasla thirsted for. He would have gladly given that honor to Angelo. 

"Liar!!" Angelo screamed and slapped him. Schneider stared in helpless shock. The man had pulled the thoughts right from his mind. Of course he had. No matter what powers he held now, first and foremost he had been a telepath, able to read men's souls. Schneider was just surprised that he had been able to get past his own, not unimpressive, mental barriers. Had he become that weak? 

Fine. Let him pull the scorn from his thoughts. Let him know how unchanged he was from the Devin Angelino of the old world, who got off on cowing people, on holding power over the weak and subtly causing them misery. Only now it wasn't so subtle. 

The Prophet laughed, framing Schneider's face with his hands, bending close to whisper. "Maybe you're right. Perhaps I do. We all have our weaknesses. You gained power by force of magic and war, while I chose a more subtle path. I was more successful at it. People beg to worship me. They speak your name to frighten their children into good behavior. I will shatter you. Into a thousand little pieces that all beg to please me. It's only a matter of time. I already own your body ---"

One hand drifted down to caress the length of Schneider's body, then back up to tap a hard nail against his temple. "--It's only your mind I need to break. And if I can't do it by pain alone, then perhaps I will find those things you love and destroy them. Yoko will be mine in short order. I'll let you imagine the wedding night. Do you know she sent a messenger to bring the Ninja Master here. Your salvation, she thought. Pretty young man, that messenger. I believe you knew him. He won't reach Gara. I'm afraid he's passed to another realm. Gara would have, if he'd come. And that pretty, pretty little half elf. I'll find them both sooner or later. And the Ice Lord. I had thought to take him for my next host before you were so kind as to return and offer me a better choice. I had already begun to work my way into his mind. He's prone to nightmares, you know. People prone to nightmares are easy to shatter when you get under the layer of conscious thought. If I do have to kill you, I'll have him. But I'll hurt him first, I promise you that."

"Don't -- touch -- him." He got the words out, a trembling, furious whisper that could not hide the panic that grew inside him. "Leave -- them -- alone -- you -- bastard."

Angelo smiled at the dread he saw in Schneider's eyes, that he pulled out of his mind. The first sign of true fear he had been able to invoke. Schneider hated himself for the weakness, for giving the man the lever he needed to hurt him more than any physical torture ever would. Tears of helpless fury trailed down his temples. Angelo wiped them away with his thumb, leaned down and kissed the corner of Schneider's lips.

"One way or another." He whispered, then worked a magic that cast Schneider into utter, senseless black. 

She sat curled in a chair within the confines of the Prophet's own private chambers. She could see his bedroom just through the doors to the left and shuddered, wrapping her arms tighter about her drawn up knees. Sinakha was outside, blocking her escape. She wished, oh she wished so very much, that they would send someone to get her father, so that both he and the Prophet might berate her. She dreaded being alone with Angelo. He was a fanatic, she told herself. A man obsessed with religious stricture, but he was not a monster. She was being a fool to imagine herself in peril from him. The man wanted to marry her for the Goddess' sake. He wouldn't hurt her. But he could wound her with his censure, with the power of his words. His words could sway thousands. 

What was taking him so long? Goddess please don't let Rushie fall deeper in trouble because of her misdeed. Oh, what had she been thinking to do this? To so blatantly disregard their strict orders. She had not helped herself nor Rushie. All she had done was make things worse. 

Finally, after what seemed forever, Angelo came. He walked in, pulling off his outer, formal robe. There were dirt stains on the knees of it. She made to rise and he waved a hand at her to stay.

"Sit." 

Yoko sank back into the chair, back straight, hands clutching the smooth wooden arms. She watched him go to a panel on a bookshelf where a tray of liquor sat. He poured himself a glass, offering her none. With his back to her, he took a sip, stood that way for a moment before turning to face her. His face was lined with stern disapproval. She swallowed and turned her gaze elsewhere. 

"Do you have an explanation for your actions, Tia Note Yoko? For breaking the sanctity of the temple with the usage of dark magics?"

How did he know? Rushie had said he would know, but how? The Prophet, other than the miraculous displays of covenant with the High God, had never admitted to the practice of magic. She had no answer for him. If he wanted apology she couldn't give that either. She was not sorry she had come. She was sorry she had been caught at it. 

"The king will hear of this. Your father will. Neither will grant you clemency this time. Your punishment will be given over to me. As will, as I'm sure your father has informed you, your hand in marriage."

Her eyes snapped to him. She shook her head to deny it, but he held up a sharp finger to silence her. "Geo Note will be relieved that I still desire to take you in matrimony even after this debacle. I shall strive to overlook it. I shall strive to teach you the error of your ways. You will come in penance for the next score of days. You will begin this very night, on your knees you will pray before me, begging the High God for forgiveness."

"But, I have not declared my faith to the High God." She argued. He stalked towards her, grabbed her by the arms and pulled her up out of the chair. Again, in one night he laid hands to her. She glared this time, defiant of his attempts to make her cringe. "I am not one of your faithful, your holiness. I'll take my penance in the Cathedral, if I must."

"You have not offended the goddess or her brethren, girl. You have offended ME." He glared down at her, eyes boring into her own. The defiance trembled, curled up and ran with its tail between its legs. All from that stare. He let her go and stabbed an imperious finger at the small alter against the wall of the room. "Kneel and pray."

She trembled, afraid of this man, almost took a step to do his bidding, when the door opened and Sinakha stepped into the room. The Prophet's face twisted in irritation. 

"Your Holiness. Forgive me. But a messenger has come from the King begging immediate audience."

"Now? What does he want?"

Sinakha shrugged blandly. "The messenger did not say. He only implied the urgency."

Angelo waved a hand. "Fine. I'll come immediately. And you --" He fixed Yoko with his gaze. "--Have not gotten off so easily. The king will hear of this tonight, I assure you. Come tomorrow to the temple for penance, if you value your soul."

She ran through the darkened streets toward the palace for as long as her breath and her legs would allow, then she stumbled on, holding her side against the pain. She did not go to her rooms, but to the kitchen where she knew many of the maids. She found the girl who was assigned Princess Sheela's suite, and implored her to carry a message to the princess. She sat in the kitchen by the fire, shivering until the maid came back, with the news that the princess had agreed. 

She bolted from the kitchen then, and through the dusk shadowed gardens towards the Cathedral. Into its welcoming, soothing sanctuary, with its great stained glass windows behind the naive. With its aura of peace and comfort. How could anyone forsake it for the Temple of the High God? How could anyone choose the harsh doctrines of the High God over the gentle teaches of the Goddess? She entered the small, private shrine and knelt before the alter, waited there with tense expectation for perhaps half of an hour, before the soft rustle of silk announced the arrival of another worshipper. Silently, Sheela moved into the room. Lowered herself to the cushion on the floor, and bowed her head in prayer. When they'd knelt there for a while undisturbed, the Princess finally whispered.

"What happened?"

"I was stupid. I snuck in to see him and I got caught."

"Is he all right?"

Yoko took a breath. "I don't know. I was hardly there a moment before the Prophet dragged me away."

"The Prophet himself!"

"That's not the worst of it. He's asked my father for my hand. Can you believe it?" Her voice rose in her dismay. Sheela turned dark eyes her way, astounded. 

"He didn't."

"He did. And the worst part is -- I think that half of it is to hurt Rushie."

"Why would you think that? Why would the Prophet go to such lengths?"

"I don't know. I just -- it's just a feeling I have. He hates Rushie."

"He hates what he thinks he is."

"No it's more than that. I'm certain of it now. And -- and I think he may have magic too."

"That's ridiculous. I hate what he's doing to Schneider too, but I can't make the Prophet out as evil because of it."

"I don't know what to think of him anymore. I know I won't marry him. I know we've got to get Rushie out of there."

"Us?"

"Who else? I can't wait for Gara to come. I want to get him out of Meta-Rikan."

"Even if we could -- Larz, the Prophet's men, would be after him."

"Then we run fast and far. We get to Gara, if we can."

The Princess turned back to the alter, eyes frightened, hands clasped before her breast. 

"You've made risks for him before." Yoko said.

"Yes. But, I've more to think about than myself now."

Yoko stared and comprehension dawned. "Your baby?"

"My baby. The heir to Judas and Meta-Rikan."

Yoko bowed her head, frustrated in the knowledge that she could not argue with the Princess' need to protect an unborn child. "You're right. You can't risk it."

Silence. They both sat under the watchful eye of the Goddess. Sheela lifted her eyes. "But, with the heir to two kingdoms in my womb, they would not dare to censure me. They will take the greatest care no matter what insanity I discharge. And I am allowed into the Temple freely, even if you are not."

Yoko bit her lip, thinking she ought to discourage a pregnant woman from such risks, yet unable to utter the words. Instead her mind whirled with strategy. "And you are always accompanied by ladies in waiting."

"Always. And I have very faithful guards."

"There will have to be a distraction." Yoko said.

Sheela bent her head towards her, eyes alight with conspiracy. "What shall it be?"

"Well, we can't use magic. The Prophet is sensitive to that. It's how he discovered me in the first place. We'll have to get a key somehow, to the door and the manacles."

"Guards mingle. They dice, even in the temple. An adept enough hand and a ring of keys might be lifted long enough to make an impression for copy."

"You have the mind of a brigand, Princess." Yoko grinned. "I never noticed before."

"I never had anything denied me."

The two of them stayed at prayer for a very long time. 


	12. Chapter Twelve

aftermath12

**Twelve**

Yoko went the temple the next day, early in the morning to take her penance. Rather she do it willingly than have father drag her there. He had not spoken to her and she had done her best to avoid his presence. She kneeled in the temple with the other penitents and pretended to pray for forgiveness. Angelo came out and watched her. Not obvious. Most of the folk in the temple were unaware of his presence in the shadow of the naive. But she knew he was there, staring at her. She stayed for an hour, a decent length of time to beg for absolution, then rose stiffly to her feet and hurried down the gleaming central aisle towards the doors. No one stopped her. She had held terror with each step she took that Sinakha would appear out of the shadows with plans to escort her to the Prophet. She was out of the doors and down the steps with a sense of victory in her heart.

She had no desire to go back to the dormitory where Father might corner her and give her one more lecture on good behavior, or tell her that he had decided to try and force the marriage upon her. So she went to the river and spent the day along the docks, browsing the dozens of import shops that boasted distant and exotic goods. When Sheela had what they needed for their plan to work, she would send someone to contact Yoko.

With nightfall, she had no choice but to return home. There was no note waiting under her door. Disappointed, she curled up with a pillow before her small hearth and stared into the flames. Father did not come to berate her, which clearly told the extent of his upset. If he was not talking to her, then he was deeply disappointed. She was sorry to hurt him. She would be sorry for the hurt to come, the disgrace of a daughter who committed sacrilege against the church and treason against the state.

She slept on the floor before the fire, and woke with a stiff neck and a growing sense of expectation. She bathed and washed her hair, twined it in a braid down her back and dutifully marched to the temple for her second day of penance. There was a coach outside the steps of the temple and pair of guards who clustered together in the cool morning to smoke outside it. They wore neither the livery of the temple or the Dragon Guard. It took her a moment to recognize the colors of Judas. She frowned, and was half way up the steps before one of the guards called to her from below.

"Lady. You dropped something."

She looked down, startled and the man trotted up the steps, bent several steps below her and made to pick up a silken handkerchief. It was not hers. He handed it to her anyway, whispering as she leaned in to take it. "Her majesty prays within. Wait for a sign." Then he was bowing to her and returning to his comrade. She took a breath, balled the handkerchief in her hand and continued up the steps. Why had not the princess contacted her before this? Had something happened? She was not prepared.

Thoughts spinning, she walked down the aisle, past the faithful followers of the High God, eyes scanning the temple for sight of Sheela. There, at the front row of benches, a cluster of richly dressed women sitting with clasped hands and heads bowed in supplication. The princess and her ladies in waiting. Being a penitent, Yoko was not allowed the dubious comfort of the wooden benches and moved to the space just in front of the first row where sinners might kneel and beg mercy of the god. She settled before the group of women, taking her accustomed position. Behind her, she heard one lady in waiting whisper to another in tones loud enough to reach her ears but no further.

"How unfortunate that his majesty, king Haden has chosen to leave for Judas on the morrow. Our lady will surely miss Meta-Rikan."

"Yes. How unfortunate."

Yoko's eyes snapped open. So that was it. Had King Haden heard of his wife's visit to Schneider's cell? Was that what prompted this early departure? Goddess, please let Sheela's men have gotten the keys.

"I suppose," the same lady who had spoken said. "That her majesty will have to accomplish all the tasks she hoped today, for there will be no further chance."

Yoko took a breath. It was now then. There would be a sign. What sign? She lifted her eyes to scan the shadows beyond the naive, looking for Angelo. Would he come and watch her penance today? Goddess hope he had more important things to do.

She waited, so tense her jaw hurt from clenching. Time passed with painful slowness. There was a rustle of silk behind her. The ladies prepared to rise, reaching for cloaks. One brushed against Yoko's back. A hand touched her shoulder, a voice whispered. "Don't you think you've prayed enough?" Then was gone.

Was she to leave with them? She rose to her feet, trailing out behind them, mixing with the lot of them as they paused at the end of the aisle to talk among themselves. A man cried out in rage in the last row, leaping at another who sat beside him. Blows were exchanged. The women squealed, clustering like a herd of frightened sheep against one another in their efforts to get away from the violence. Priests ran towards the combatants, Guards from the doors and from the interior of the temple did. A cloak was thrown over Yoko's shoulders. Fingers grasped her hand and pulled her desperately out of the huddled women and along the back of the temple. She ran, caught sight of Sheela's profile under a raised hood and made haste to lift her own. The Princess halted not far from the door they sought, lifting a hand to warn silence. The screams of the women at the front of the temple were loud enough to wake the dead. The door in front of them opened, and guards ran out, looking for the disturbance. They passed the two hooded women without a second glance. Sheela and Yoko slipped behind them and into the door.

Down the hall and to the door leading down the cellar. "They'll break up the fight and come back. We won't have time." Yoko hissed.

"Trust me. There will be another diversion." She produced a key from under her cloak and inserted it into the lock. Yoko grabbed a lantern from a hook on the wall and proceeded the princess down the stairs, through the basement and down the second flight. Almost to his cell. Sheela inserted the key, turned it in the lock and pushed the door open. The two of them burst into the cell, alight with fear induced adrenaline.

And there Rushie was, curled on his side against the wall, not moving. Not even apparently conscious.

"Oh, goddess." Sheela cried.

Yoko moaned. It had never occurred to her, that they might get this far and fail, merely because they couldn't carry him out of the dungeon.

"Unlock the manacles." She snapped at Sheela, who looked as if she were about to start lamenting about his condition. She crouched beside him, as the Princess fumbled to insert the key in the locks about his wrists.

"Rushie!" she cried. "Wake up." She shook him. His lashes fluttered, but did not open. "Get up, Damnit." A hard slap to his cheek and he groaned, turning his head. Sheela had one hand free. He brought that to his face, half aware. How long had it been since they'd passed the guards? Three minutes? Five? When they went back up those stairs, would the guards be back at their station?

The other wrist was free, the chains hanging loose against the wall. She caught hold of his hand and hauled him upright. His eyes tried to focus on her, but there was a great deal of disorientation in their clouded depths. He half smiled at her, tried to reach out and touch her face. She would have nothing of it. She captured his face with her hands and hissed at him.

"Snap out of it! Goddamn you, snap out of it!"

"Yoko." The princess pleaded with her, eyes wide at the viscous tone in Yoko's voice.

"Get under his other arm." Yoko said, wedging a shoulder under his armpit and attempting to get him to his feet. Sheela pulled from the other side. They all swayed. Goddess, he was going to be more than they could handle on the stairs unless he regained some semblance of lucidity. They staggered to the door, out into the hall and into blackness. Yoko cursed.

"The lantern." She pressed him against the wall, with Sheela making sure he didn't just slide to the floor and ran back for the light. She came back, ready to take his weight again, and he waved a hand weakly at her.

"Give me a second." He murmured. "I'm okay -- just a little dizzy."

"We don't have a second." She glared desperately. The princess, still under his arm, met her gaze with huge worried eyes. Yoko pulled at him to get him to take the support she offered.

"Is this -- an official escape?" he asked and she hated the weakness in his voice. Damn Angelo for doing this to him.

"Shut up." She was out of breath already and imagining all the dire things that would happen if they were caught.

"Yes." Sheela said from his other side. "We have to hurry up the stairs before the guards come back. Oh, Goddess, I'm so glad you're alive."

"I don't feel alive." He muttered, then cursed when they reached the stairs and he saw the steep climb before them.

They began the ascent. He got stronger even as she seemed to lose stamina. They passed the first level and began to climb the last set of steps. Yoko pressed her ear to the door at the top, listening for the sounds of guards talking. There was nothing. She urged Sheela and Schneider onward. Nothing in the hall but a faint acrid smell.

"Something's burning." She turned to look back at the Princess, who shrugged from her position under Schneider's arm, with an innocent look on her face. At the final door leading to the temple, Sheela paused, extracting herself from Schneider with what Yoko was certain was a look of regret. She unfastened her cloak and underneath it there was another of similar color. The outer had seemed unusually long for her and was plain in color and ornamentation.

"Here." She put it about his shoulders, her hands lingering at his throat as she fastened it. She stared up at him, lips trembling and cried. "Please be safe."

"I saw your husband. He's not good enough for you."

Sheela's eyes welled with tears. Yoko rolled her own eyes and expelled a gust of air. "We don't have time for this." She hissed, grabbed at his arm and hauled him towards the door and away from Sheela. He followed her meekly enough, only stumbling a little. With the door open the smell of smoke was stronger. Everyone in the temple was crowded at the doors, looking outside. They crept along the edge of the wall until they reached the fringes of the crowd.

"What's burning?" Yoko whispered.

"My coach." The Princess answered. "Oh." She gasped, cringing back against Schneider, her eyes fixed across the crowd of people. Yoko followed her gaze and drew breath herself. Captain Sinakha, with several guards in his wake stalked towards the disturbance. She glanced up at Rushie, who was staring at the Basilica captain with hard, angry eyes, not bothering to hide his face at all. She jabbed an elbow in his side and he gasped, doubling in more pain than she had intended to give him. One remembered the bruises on his ribs and thought of cracked and broken bones. It was hard to recall that he did not at the moment have the power to heal the ills of his body.

"Through the crowd." Sheela whispered. "When you reach the steps, I'll make certain Sinakha has other things on his mind. Just go quickly."

Yoko nodded. Rushie was still holding his side. Impulsively Sheela leaned over and kissed his mouth while his face was on a level with hers. "Good luck."

Two hooded and cloaked figures slipped into the crowd, past guards with their attention fixed on a merrily burning coach at the bottom of the temple steps. Sheela's guard, along with temple guard were attempting to put it out. They parted from the anonymity of the crowd. Behind them, she heard Sheela's voice raised in consternation over the destruction of her carriage. Yoko cast a quick glance over her shoulder and saw the Princess shaking a finger in the face of captain Sinakha.

Her arm in his, they reached the street, heading away from the temple at as fast a pace as he could manage and not draw attention Her heart was beating so fast it felt liken to burst. Free. He was free. She could hardly believe the feat had been accomplished. Laughter wanted to bubble up in her throat, but the rational fear that very soon his presence would be missed and the whole of the city set in arms because of it, kept her excitement to a low simmer. She pressed against his side, as much to lend her support as to revel in the feel of him.

Neither said a word until the temple was a block behind them, only its spires showing above the roofs of more common buildings.

"I don't recall this part of the city." The cowl put his face in shadow. A few strands of pale hair trailed out where it fastened at his throat.

"It wasn't here last time you were. Thousands and thousands have come to live here since the Prophet came. The city grew to accommodate them."

"When did he come?"

"Not long after -- after Ansasla was destroyed."

"After I died, you mean?"

"Yes. He brought an army of followers. He said he had been told by the High God that Meta-Rikan was to be the new home of the faithful."

"He lied."

She peered up at his profile, a glimpse of straight nose and sensuous lips. He took in the whole of the new city; the quaint shops, the cobbled streets, the industrious folk who lived and worked here.

"I don't know what to believe anymore." She admitted quietly. "I used to think he was a good man."

"So did he. Maybe he still does. It doesn't make it so." There was rancor in his tone. A loathing that made his voice tremble and his fingers tighten on her arm. "Where are we going, Yoko?"

An excellent question. Her mind had been so intent on getting away from the vicinity of the temple that she just walked blindly. Sheela and she had talked about ways out of the city last night, but had not come up with an exact plan. They had both leaned towards the notion of using the river as a means of escape. Go by boat up to Judas where the hunt would not be as strong. Where Sheela had connections and might be able to help them eastward where Gara's forces were.

"To the docks. We'll find a boat to take us up river."

"Find one quick." He said. "He'll figure it out soon and be after me."

"Boats leave all the time for Judas. Every hour."

He stared ahead of them, down the road where a troop of royal guard marched down the center of the street. Even while she gaped, mind momentarily blanking, he veered her into the shadow of an awning, turning his head to look into the window of the shop that sported it.

"I hate this." He muttered, staring at a display of butchered meats.

"What?" she asked breathlessly.

"Having to hide from mere foot soldiers. God, I want these things OFF." He wrenched at the bracelets in frustration."

"We'll find a wizard in Judas who can break the spell." She promised.

He sniffed, glancing down at her as if she were the greatest of fools. "If I can't break it, do you think some warlock for hire can?"

"You're on the inside." She said. "You're not supposed to be able to break it."

"You don't understand these wards." He told her sullenly. "I don't understand them."

"C'mon." She pulled at his arm when the guard had passed down the street. "Maybe Gara or Arshes Nei can do it, when we find them."

"She's with him?" He asked.

Yoko pressed her lips, a tingle of -- something -- making her back go stiff. It was not, she told herself, jealousy. It was more a regret that any chance Gara might have had to win Arshes Nei's affection would be banished once the half elf knew Schneider was alive. It was concern for Gara that made her brows beetle and her teeth clench.

"Last I heard. She was going to help him hold the eastern boarder. She could be anywhere now." She let go of his arm and crossed her own under the folds of her cloak.

"You said she was still sad. Over me."

"Did I?" Yoko asked airily.

He lifted a brow at her, ghost of a smile touching his lips. He did not ask her more.

The smell of the docks announced the river long before they came within sight of its sluggish, brown waves. Vessels of every size rocked gently at dock. A few tall-masted ocean going vessels among a crowd of squatter river boats and fishing tubs. They needed to find out what vessel was soon to leave port for up river. She asked several wondering sailors, who seemed of the opinion that the river boat _Bilge Rat_ , was very soon to head out of dock and make for northern ports.

"How appropriate." Schneider muttered, when they stood on the pier below the squat, dingy boat, watching her sparse crew scurry about the decks in preparation to depart. It stank. The stench was palatable and nauseating. There were crates of live animals on the decks. Chickens, pigs, sheep, all crowded into intolerably small spaces. One hated to imagine what was crammed below decks. If the situation had not been so desperate, time not so much against them, she might have suggested they find another ship to attempt passage on.

The captain of the _Bilge Rat_ .came out to meet them, when they walked up the much patched plank, when what might have been his first mate scurried to tell him that they had intruders on the deck.

"What by the fewking, puss filled sores of a dock whore, are you doing on my boat? I paid my freight tax, by the wilting tits of me mum. What more do you want?"

Yoko blinked. Schneider lifted both brows at the colorful imagery the man's words brought to mind.

"We're not tax collectors, sir." Yoko began.

"Then get the fewking hell off my boat. We've got fewking work to do."

"We -- we were hoping that we might buy passage down the river."

The captain gawked at her, his tiny, mis-matched eyes squinting to see under the shadow of her hood. He was as tall as she, and carried the weight of a man Schneider's height. It rested mostly in the great round stomach that protruded from the short, incredibly dirty vest he wore. It was hard to differentiate the smell of his boat, from that emanating from his pores. Yoko tried hard not to gag.

"This ain't no fewking passenger vessel. Have you got yer eyes in yer arse? This is a cargo boat, missy."

"We're in a dreadful hurry, and we were told you're about to leave port now."

"Fewking gossip mongers."

"Listen, you repulsive little toad." Schneider leaned forward, a good foot taller than the captain. "It is quite clear that this boat is not fit for human presence, but let us assume for the sake of argument that the both of us are gluttons for punishment and wish to indulge ourselves in the worst, most deplorable stench we can find -- that being your filthy tub -- what do you care if we've gold to pay and no particular problem with vermin and disease?"

The captain stared at him. Yoko tried to smile, but his smell turned the expression sour. It occurred to her that she might not have enough money on her person to tempt the smarmy little man. She had not left home anticipating this. She had not left home saying a word to Father. She had not even seen him. A twinge of guilt fluttered in her stomach over that.

"How much gold?" The captain finally asked, greed overcoming his aversion to their presence. She reached for the pouch at her belt. It felt distressingly light. She emptied the contents into her palm. The captain laughed scornfully. "There's not enough there for me to ship yer fewking pigs, much less yer lofty selves."

Schneider glowered, throwing back his cloak to free his arms, as if he had plans of taking the grimy little man by the neck and forcing a passage from him. Something clinked faintly in the cloak. The captain's eyes lit and he leered at Schneider.

"I knows the sound of gold tumbling, when I hears it. What do you have there?"

Schneider looked down at himself. Felt inside the cloak and found within an inner pocket a pouch that was by far more impressive than the one Yoko had produced. It was quite full of gold. Enough gold to tide even a princess over. Bless Sheela, even if she had kissed Rushie.

"Oohh, that's enough." The _Bilge Rat's_ .captain assured them.

"In your dreams." Yoko snapped, snatching the bag out of Schneider's hands. He had a decided lack of respect for the value of money, very seldom having to pay for anything in his role as conqueror and wizard. He either took what he wanted, or people gave it to him in hopes of gaining his favor. She counted out five coins and gingerly placed them in the dirty palm of the captain. "This is what we'll pay. It's too much, but we are in a hurry."

Thick fingers closed over the gold. Beady eyes shifted, to watch her secret the pouch on her person. He waved a hand towards the rear of the boat. "You can sleep below deck with the crew, if you don't mind close company." His eyes passed up and down Yoko lewdly.

"We'll sleep on the deck." Schneider told him.

The captain shrugged. "Suit yerselves. One bowl of gruel a day is all the fare we have on the _Bilge Rat_.."

"And wonderful stuff it is, I'm sure." Schneider muttered, when the captain abandoned them to yell at his crewmen to toss off lines and push the boat out from dock. They stood on the shifting deck, while the five or so men that manned the boat, hurried to do their jobs. There was a pile of canvas and coiled rope aft. Extra sail. It seemed by far a more inviting place than the horrors that no doubt existed below decks. They made their way to that simple haven and Schneider sat down with a sigh, favoring his right side. There was some slight privacy here, with the stacks of rope on one side and the side of the boat on the other.

Yoko sat down next to him, watching the shore begin to recede.

"Are you all right?" She asked, when he lay back and grunted in the process.

"Wonderful." He shut his eyes, folding his hands behind his head. The sunlight on his face revealed bruises under the dirt. There was a nasty cut above one dark brow. She brushed his bangs back to see it, and he slitted his eyes to look up at her. She frowned at him.

"Do you have broken ribs?"

"Probably."

"I'm sorry I jabbed you in the temple."

"You should be." He shut his eyes again. She sniffed, shifting the cloak to get a look at his side. He let her do it without protest. A great dark bruise marred the skin over his ribs. She ran her fingers lightly over muscle and bone and felt him shiver reflexively. Under the dirt and bruising, his smooth skin was tanned an overall light gold. There was a beautiful, lean symmetry to his body, battered or not, that drew her eye like a magnet. It had been so long since she had seen him in the sunlight, in anything but the dark of a dungeon cell, that she had to stare, while she had the chance and his eyes were closed. The sheer intensity of his presence, his beauty, was made more bearable by the blood.

She took her hands off him, flushing, shivering and crossed her arms under her cloak. Three breaths, four and she got her erratic pulse under control. He always did that to her. Always made her have to jealously guard her self-control. She tried to take her mind off him for the moment and worry about the future. Three, four days travel by river to Judas. Thanks to Sheela they had the gold to purchases horses and supplies. It would be easy to reach the eastern mountains. The only problem she could foresee was missing Gara on his way to Meta-Rikan. He was probably already on route. He would find out soon enough what been happening and hopefully figure out that they would try and reach him.

The boat settled down to a steady rocking on the waves, caught a wind in its sails and fought against the seaward current that wished to drag it southwest. The wind blew the stench towards the bow, and left the aft blessedly free of the foul odor.

"Father's going to be worried." She said quietly. He didn't respond. She looked down at him and gauged by his deep, even breaths that he slept. Good, she thought. He needed a peaceful, safe rest. She might have sought one herself, if the occasional speculative glances of the rivermen had not set her nerves on edge. She braced her back against a coil of rope and watched the river pass by.

It was full dark when Schneider opened his eyes. For a moment, he thought he was still in the cell and that the figure creeping towards him in the darkness was Angelo come to deliver more of his tortures. But there was a strong breeze and it carried the smell of fresh water with it and a hint of animal dung and the figure, when he opened his eyes and looked up at it, froze, like a thief caught in the act. Most likely it was. He remembered the boat and the swarthy crew and smiled up at the ragged, skinny man who crouched a few feet from the bed of canvas and rope they had made.

"Just -- just fetching a bit of rope." The riverman whispered, looked frantically about for a bundle of rope to grab and scurried off into the shadows of the deck. Schneider relaxed, as comfortable as he could recall being in -- a very long time. There was softness and warmth against his side. There was, now that he was awake enough to think about it, a hand resting across his chest and a knee tucked up over his thigh. Yoko snuggled close, her face hidden by her hood, the folds of her cloak draped over the both of them. The air was cool, tinged by winter's fast approach. That didn't bother him. At least it was open air. At least there was a sky over his head and stars that gleamed faintly in the darkness. There had been no stars in hell.

He did not know why he was here, alive and in the mortal world again. He did not know which power of hell, if it had been a power of hell at all and not some other indefinable source, had thrust him out of the Pit. He'd tried often enough himself, to no avail. The boundaries of hell were difficult to pierce. It worried him, the not knowing. It hinted of some plan that was not his own. It hinted at himself being a pawn in some other power's game. He did not enjoy being a pawn. He frowned up at the stars, wishing for answers that would not come.

All he got was a small sigh from Yoko and her shifting against him, restless in her dreams. He rested his cheek against the top of her head, valuing her peace and her rest more than the physical urge to discover the secrets of her body. Though she sorely tempted him with the warmth of her thigh across his and the slight curling of her nails on the skin of his chest, like that of a cat kneading in its contentment. As if at the moment he would be able, with his ribs complaining at every breath and his stamina surely far below its normal range. And all the other little reminders he had in body and mind of the Prophet's regard. Oh there was surely an account there that would be hell to pay when he got his power back. He dared Larz and all of the forces of Meta-Rikan and its southern alliances to stand in his way.

But, for the moment, that had to wait. For the moment, he was at the disadvantage. All he had was Yoko and her optimistic hope of reaching Gara. He would not endanger her with his notions of revenge. He hardly had the heart to tell her that her messenger had never reached the Ninja Master. That Angelo, the schemer, the master planner, would guess their goal and set forces in motion to intercept them. East was not the wisest course to follow, despite the help that resided there. But he would wait and see what Judas brought before he suggested another route.

[ NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath13.htm



	13. Chapter Thirteen

aftermath13

**Thirteen**

The _Bilge Rat _ drifted into the port of Judas four days after leaving Meta-Rikan. Her crew was not sorry to see their passengers gone. Schneider could be intimidating. He could be arrogant and he was feeling close enough to his old self to excel at both. They walked onto the docks of Judas, which at one time had been greater by far than those of Meta-Rikan, but now were a shadow of their former glory. The city had never recovered from its siege, some seven years past, by the Lords of Havoc. Its walls were pitted and gouged. Some of its buildings still the crumbled wrecks they had been left after the siege. It was a city that had lost its heart and only recently, since the marriage of its prince by default to Meta-Rikan's princess, had moneys started flowing in abundance towards restorations. A fair deal of that money came from Meta-Rikan and Larz's wish to see his sister city a strong ally should the need arise. The merchant ships still sailed up the river to Judas, but nowadays they left the best of their goods at the ports of Meta-Rikan.

Yoko and Schneider drifted about the docks, listening to rumors, buying a bit of supplies here and bit there. Something was most definitely astir. The guard that walked the docks was plentiful and the merchants wary. When they asked one swordsmith, from whom Schneider purchased a blade and scabbard, what was afoot, the man professed to have no clear knowledge. He only knew that as of the day before, the city guard had been swarming over all the city. Not good news. A messenger on horseback, with fresh mounts waiting at all the road houses between here and Meta-Rikan could have reached Judas a day or more before them.

"We need horses." Yoko said when they walked from the shop, hugging herself nervously while Schneider examined the sword he had bought.

"I need decent clothing."

One could hardly argue with that. Under the fine cloak he was clad in the filthiest of blood stained rags. She gestured to a common clothier that catered to sailors and the working men of the docks. It did not suit him. He found a richer shop a street past the docks. The proprietor sniffed disdainfully at him when he walked in, shoeless, dirty, with tangled unwashed hair.

"Perhaps you've wondered into the wrong shop. The Good Samaritan's Hand Me Downs is a street over."

Schneider fixed an icy gaze on the man and purred. "Perhaps you'd like to spend the very brief remainder of your days licking the dung from the soles of my boots?"

The clothier blanched, wisely not remarking that Schneider had to boots to speak of.

"We've money to pay." Yoko offered, embarrassed. Schneider cast her a withering glance at her attempts to soothe an awkward situation. Ignoring the shopkeeper, he began shuffling through the racks of clothing. Found a pleated black linen tunic and tossed it into Yoko's keeping while he continued to browse. He had always had a taste for fashion. He was generally quite spectacularly garbed. He had gone to great troubles to learn and perfect a spell of Sartor. Or for lack of a better word, tailoring out of thin air. Arshes Nei and Kall-Su thought it was the most ridiculous and egotistical waste of power ever to grace a summoning. For a refined Sartor spell took as much power, when one got right down to it, as a highly powerful destructive spell in any other self respecting wizard's arsenal. One was calling forth the power to creating clothing out of thin air, after all. It took a fair amount of concentration and fair portion of energy. It had taken him two decades to master it. He enjoyed it more than any spell to his name. It was quite better than the trivial task of shopping for one's outfits.

He found a leather vest with silver inlay along the inside edges that he rather liked and Yoko got that too. A pair of soft leather trousers, dyed black, followed, then a thick black belt with an ornate silver buckle and a long black cloak, (obviously the color of the one Sheela had given him did not go with the dark choice of his new clothing). Yoko piled his choices on the counter while he sat down on the wooden bench by the shoe and boot selection to size boots to his feet. He found a pair of high black boots with knee guards and pulled them on, stood up and stomped about in them before whirling on the morose shopkeeper and stabbing an imperious finger at the man.

"A bathhouse. Preferably one where they change the water on occasion."

"Two doors down." The man said grudgingly. "They've even girls to wash your back."

Schneider lifted a brow in interest. "Perfect. Pay the man, Yoko."

Yoko sniffed, asked the shopkeeper what was owed and reluctantly counted out what she thought was an outrageously high price for the purchase. Schneider was already half out the door, though and she hurried grabbed the bundle the somewhat mollified clothier had packaged for her.

"Girls to wash his back." She muttered to herself. She followed him into the bathhouse where he was already demanding a clean, hot bath of the old woman who ran it. He cast her a look when she leaned on the counter beside him.

"Care to join me?"

"No, I'm quite clean enough, thank you. Besides, I don't like girls washing my back."

"Your loss." He grinned at her, amused by her pique. The old woman returned to guide him to one of the bathing rooms, claiming that a girl would be in shortly. Yoko tossed him his bundle of new clothing and proclaimed that she would wait for him out side.

When the old woman came back, claiming that Schneider had told her Yoko would pay, Yoko grumbled and dug in the pouch for some of the lesser coins she had gotten in change from the clothier. Her fingers trembled on an extra piece of silver.

"Do you have any fat, ugly wash girls?" She asked hopefully. The old woman lifted a brow with interest. "Newly married, huh?"

Yoko blushed. "No!"

"Ah, then you have even more reason to be jealous."

"I'm not jealous."

"For an extra coin or two, I could find a plain faced girl to attend your man."

"He's not my man." Yoko muttered, digging the coins out anyway and placing them in the wrinkled palm. Cackling with glee, the old woman went off to fetch the proper girl. Yoko sniffed, crossed her arms under her breast, then half smiled.

It was a thoroughly unenjoyable bath. Oh, the water was clean and stingingly hot and the wooden tub was a good enough size to accommodate even his long legs, but washgirl who lumbered in was pig faced and almost his own weight. Her giggle sounded like a rat in a trap and her hands had the tendency to wonder to parts of him that had no desire to have her hands upon them. He came away from it clean of the stench of the Prophet's dungeon, though the repulsive scent of the man's presence in his head still lingered. He shooed the cow away when she attempted to help him dry off and dress, accomplishing that task himself. He felt incredibly better in relatively decent clothing and clean, if not damp and tangled hair about his shoulders. He wished for a mirror to gauge the fit of the clothing, but found Yoko's and the old woman out front's reactions to his reappearance assurance enough that he was at least somewhat back to his old self. The old woman lifted both brows in surprise at the difference of the man who came out of her baths from the man who had gone in. Yoko just stared at him, then blinked and caught herself and promptly looked away.

It helped his bruised ego. He caught Yoko about the shoulders and ushered her to the door without a word to the gawking wash house mistress. They walked down the wooden sidewalk in the midst of mid-day pedestrian traffic. The smells of foods from venders and taverns preparing for lunchtime clientele drifted tantalizingly among the passerby, luring folk to their origins. After four days of the Bilge Rat's gruel, the aromas were overcoming. Even Yoko could not complain overly much about putting off yet a while longer the search for horses and supplies.

There was a tavern not far down the sidewalk who's placard boasted a fine and varied menu. It apparently lived up to its bragging for the main room was filled with patrons. A sweet voiced female minstrel played for coin near the hearth. Schneider jostled another set of customers who had been waiting for a spot near the warmth of the fire out of the way and appropriated the but recently empty bench for himself and Yoko. There was grumbling, but the fat little merchant and his fancy boy were neither willing to argue overly with the dangerous look Schneider fixed them with. He ordered a great selection of food from the waitress that passed by the table, while Yoko rested her elbow on the tabletop, shutting her eyes as if exhausted. He had a moment of concern, then noticed that she was humming along with the popular song the minstrel was singing and it was no sudden faint. He glanced at the minstrel himself. A shapely enough form, with a fall of straight dark hair obscuring the face. She had the voice of an angel -- or a devil, depending on who's view you took. She also, he noted, had the tattoo of a slave on the back of the hand that held the neck of her lute. Not a terribly common practice this far south, slavery. It was more a northern and northeastern custom. There was a man sitting behind her, nursing a mug of ale, who kept a close eye on the coins tossed at the feet of the singer. Her master then. He almost turned his eye away, no longer interested in either master or slave, when he noted the rune signs sown into the lapel of the man's vest. And upon closer inspection the ornate and gaudy rings of warding about his fingers. A hedge wizard or a warlock for hire. No proper wizard would parade about with such evident signs of the trade on his person. And obviously this one was not that good, since he had to rely on the income of his slave.

Schneider sniffed in disdain and turned his attention to the mug of ale and the basket of hot bread that the harried waitress sit before them.

"What?" Yoko asked him, sharp enough to have caught his contempt.

"Nothing. Just a hedge wizard pretending jewels and runesigns make him more of a power than he is."

"Where?" Her eyes grew curious. He indicated the general direction of the man with his chin, hands full of ale and bread.

"Oh. I wonder if he might help us with the wards?"

"Not likely." He snorted, but she was up from the bench and scurrying around the table in complete disregard of his opinion. The platter of food came about the same time she came back with the hedge wizard in tow. The man was greasy and imperious, with eyes that plainly told of how high a regard he held himself over the rest of the world. Schneider ignored him, more interested in the roast chicken before him.

"I'm told you need the services of a wizard." The man finally said, after enduring Schneider's lack of notice for several long breaths.

"Rushie." Yoko leaned over his shoulder pleadingly. "He can at least try."

He glanced askew at her, holding a greasy bird leg between his fingers. Large brown eyes begged for compliance, but the twist of her mouth suggested she was about to become petulant if he refused her.

"Fine. Whatever." He snapped. "Let him look at the damned things, for what little good it will do."

"Not here." The hedge wizard said, leaning down to whisper the warning. "The common folk aren't as tolerant of works of magic as they used to be. Outside."

Schneider waved the drumstick under the hedge wizard's nose. "When I finish eating. I'll not abandon a good meal just to listen to your drivel."

The man sniffed, offended. "I can see you have little respect for the powers of the arcane."

Schneider half laughed, turning his attention back to his lunch. Yoko said soft words the man, after which he went back to his minstrel, then she sat down next to him and reached for a slice of bread.

"You could stand to practice a little more civility, you know." She complained. "Being nice to people will get you further than rudeness."

"I don't have to be nice to people and they either get over it or they complain about it and end their miserable lives then and there."

She rolled her eyes in disbelief. "You are so full of yourself."

When the last of the food was gone, she pulled him out onto the street, where the hedge mage waited. His minstrel stood against the shadows of the wall, lute strapped across her back, head down. She never looked up at them when her master beckoned them into the privacy of the alley next to the tavern.

"She says you have wards to be broken." The man said, when they were alone in the dim alley. "Let me see them."

Schneider didn't like the tone of command. He sneered down his nose at the man, then held out his wrists. The hedge wizard pretended concentration as he reached out and touched the bands. With a simple ward, it would be a matter of entering the layers of magic with one's mind, finding the weak spots, if there were any and fraying the knot that held the whole of the ward together. It was not an uncomplicated task, but easy enough if one had the patience for it. This hedge mage might well have been adept at unworking simple wards. Schneider already knew the things fastened to his wrists were no simple workings.

The man's eyes snapped open and he snatched his hands back as though burnt. He mouthed a curse or a prayer and looked at Schneider in shock.

"By the goddess, what are those?"

Schneider lifted a lazy brow. "Why, I though you were the expert on matters arcane?"

The slave girl appeared in the mouth of the alley and the hedge mage's eyes narrowed in indignation. "Lily, I told you never to interrupt."

"Master, Holy Swords come."

The mage's eyes widened in dismay. "They've become a damned inconvenience since the Prophet's teachings have spread."

Schneider wasn't listening. He was grabbing Yoko's wrist and hauling her down the alley towards the open, back door of the building next to the Tavern. Women at laundry looked up in surprise at their entrance, complaining at their passage. Past tables where children and more women folded and pressed clothes, and into the front of the laundry shop, where he pulled her out the door onto the sidewalk, one arm about her shoulders as if they were any other couple out for a stroll. Once glance over his shoulder and he saw a troop of perhaps ten, Holy Swords, the knights of the Goddess, stop by the entrance to the tavern they had taken lunch at. They had stopped the hedge mage and his minstrel, and the man was talking animatedly.

They turned a corner and put the holy knights behind them. Yoko's face was pale with fright and her fingers clutched at his arm.

"How did they find us?" she hissed. "We've been in Judas two -- three hours at most."

"I don't know." He wondered if the wards on his wrists might allow the man who had put them there to track him. Dismal, dismal thought, that.

"We need to get out of here and on the road." She took a breath to collect herself, disengaging her fingers from his arm and pacing ahead with the look that said Yoko was in the midst of plotting.

"We need horses and supplies, but I don't know whether we've the time to risk buying the latter." She glanced back at him for opinion and he shrugged noncommittally. The little details had never been his strong suit.

"Horses first." She finalized her decision and stopped a passerby to ask where horses might be purchased. The bazaar four blocks down from the pier, they were told.

They made haste to that open air animal auction area, where every manner of beast was penned and sold for slaughter, reproduction, work or leisure. She let him choose the animals, while she nervously fingered their dwindling supply of gold. A fair portion of what they had left purchased two horses and tack. At the appearance, whether normal or not of city guard in the crowd that strolled through the bazaar, they decided to make straightway for the bridge that led over the river to the eastern side of Judas. From there on there was nothing but unwalled town separating them from their road eastward towards the mountains and Gara.

One bridge was all that was left after the Four Lords of Havoc had ripped through Judas. There were the remains of three others protruding from the waters of the river. One left standing to accommodate all the easterly passage from the city. One that was crowded with carts and people and herds of animals. And one which stood heavily guarded by men in armor at station houses on either shore. Guards milled about the western shore, city guard and few Holy Swords.

They pulled their horses up across the unkempt garden square that separated town from river and bride and watched. Yoko moaned miserably.

"What do we do? We'll never pass them unnoticed."

"Did you think he'd let me go east to Gara? Did you believe he wouldn't figure out that was the first place we'd go?"

She cast desperate eyes his way. "It's insane that he would go to all this trouble."

He didn't tell her why. He didn't think she needed to hear it then, when her pulse beat so fast in her panic that her breathing was short and ragged.

"Not east then." He said, and reined his mount about.

"There's nothing for us on the west side of the River. Nothing but the Great Forests and the western mountains."

"He'll have every force he can muster out to stop us reaching the moutons and Gara. It'll take him time to shift them westward."

Hooves clattered on cobblestone, people moved out of the path of large equine bodies.

"Stop!" Someone cried out behind them. Yoko turned her head. He half did before a bolt of impact energy passed over his shoulder and shattered the corner of the building directly in front of him. He cursed the wards for shutting out awareness of the spell-casting before it was too late. Only the ineptness of the mage who had thrown it had saved him from a nasty mishap. The horses seemed to have a better sense of it than he did, for they screamed and reared in their fright. Yoko cried out, her eyes wide and he thought she sensed the gathering of a new spell, she must have, for he felt a tiny trickle of power being summoned.

Yoko's mouth worked and she lifted one hand and the impact spell met and rebounded off a shield of her forming.

"Send it back at them." He cried. And her frantic eyes only darted to him, before she kicked her horse into motion, not casting the Rebound spell at the attackers. His own horse followed hers, frantic not to be left in the eye of danger.

"Damnit, you could have taken them out with their own spell." He cried, angry at having to be defended by her and wishing hurt on someone for the indignity.

"I don't know that spell." She cried back.

"What do they teach you in the church?"

She didn't answer. The horses pounded down the narrow streets. People cried out and scattered from their path. There were the sounds of distant pursuit behind them. Damn, damn, damn, someone had fixed a location spell on them -- or him, and passed the magical scent on to the powers that be in Judas. There was no other way coincidence worked so thoroughly against them. No other way they could have been found both at the tavern and at the bridge to the east.

They fled through the city streets, only getting turned about once or twice before they saw the western wall. There was a gate that guards were in the process of closing, to the consternation of the travelers waiting to get in and out of the city. The horn that blared a hollow cadence in the background noise of living, breathing city and the exertion of the horses under them, must have been a notice to seal Judas.

Schneider pulled out his sword, plowed through the people crowded about the half closed gates and made a swipe at the guard attempting to pull the gates shut. The man rolled, more intent on saving his life than closing the gates. Other's came running, weapons out. Yoko was through the narrow opening before they could fight their way through the panicking crowd. He followed her out, and blade still in hand galloped down the dirt road that sloped from the city. A hundred shanty huts lined the pock marked way, its hollow eyed inhabitants coming out from their shabby dwellings to see what the furor at the gates was about. Staring in dull curiosity at the riders thundering away from Judas.

The animals could not hold the all out gallop for long and were leathered and breathing hard by the time Judas had receded in the distance. There was the thin line of a forest to the northwest. They had to veer off from the main road to get there, but he wanted anonymity.

"Yoko there's a trace spell on us. Maybe me. I need to find it and cancel it. Do you know how?"

She stared at him in dismay, her breath as ragged as her mount's. She did not have to tell him she did not know the ways of that spell. He saw it in her face.

"I'll teach it to you." He promised. "In the wood."

"We haven't the time. They'll be after us."

"They've no need to hurry if they've a trace on me, girl. They can find us any time."

He spurred his horse towards the edge of forest and the animal put on a valiant burst of speed. Into the shadows and the buffered silence of the wood. Past the fledgling undergrowth of the fringe and under the canopy of older trees. He swung down and when she stared down in hesitation, wanting very badly to ride on, he reached up and pulled her out of the saddle. A twinge of stubbornness passed her face at the treatment and he shook by the shoulders to impress the seriousness of his intent.

"A spell of tracing is imbued in a person or a thing. It clings to the essence and is a beacon the caster, letting him know where ever the object of that spell is at. You've got to find the spell and then banish it."

"How?"

It was simple enough. It did not require tremendous power or lengthy study. He mouthed the words with her, again and again, until she had them verbatim. Coached her on the wanting of the spell of the need to find the essence of magic that clung to a body. She ran her hands in the air down the length of his body. Up again and paused, fingers trembling at his hands -- at the cursed bracelets on his wrists.

"I think -- it's there, on the wards."

Damn. He had feared it might be on that which he could not shed and that which she could not tamper with. He whirled and paced a few lengths, thinking furiously. What could they do to hamper the spell? The wards were designed to keep his magic power directed inwards. Painfully inwards as he had discovered. Perhaps she might be able to cloud the issue. Not banish the spell, but fog it so the trace was unclear. An outside power might be able to do that, at least temporarily.

He needed to concoct a variation of a spell that she could use. It would take time. They might as well be putting distance between themselves and Judas while he pondered. He motioned her back into the saddle and they rode deeper into the forest.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath14.htm



	14. Chapter Fourteen

aftermath14

**Fourteen**

They lived across the mountains in the waste lands, the beast-men. They had always dwelled there, for as long as living memory could recall, living nomadically, sparring amongst each other as well as the civilized folk who lived on the western side of the ridges. They were fodder for those powerful enough to command them into armies and had served those with little conscience for the destructive path they cut through the tame lands of the west and the south. Schneider had used them off and on for several centuries of subjugation. The four lords of havoc had appropriated their dubious loyalty in the years after Schneider's first death.

Gara had never liked the stench of them. Or the bestial way they fought. There was no skill to the beast-men, no grace of battle. Merely brutal, animal force that was fine for a front line charge where one expected the forerunners to be shredded, but held little more appeal to a man who had spent his life trying to attain the perfect skill, the perfect swordsmanship, the perfect posture in battle. He had never commanded the beast-men in battle, that had been Kall-Su and Arshes Nei, and he felt no particular remorse in slaughtering them when they attempted to cross the mountains back into the civilized lands of the western continent.

He had slaughtered a fair amount of them in the past year. He and his ninjas and the forces that Arshes Nei had lent him when she journeyed with him to the mountains. They were still stretched thin, with five hundred miles of passable mountains to patrol and so very many small hamlets and villages left unprotected in all that rugged terrain. More often than not, they found the beast-men who had slipped across the border by the trail of dead they left in their wake.

There was an orphanage in the lee of the central palisade where he held his command post. Arshes had built it not long after her arrival in the steep wooded lands of the eastern mountains. She had ridden with him and seen the faces of those children and women bereft of village and families to protect them and she had gained purpose to her life. She strove with single minded determination to bring those helpless wounded ones under her wing and teach them that they were not without hope. That they could, with the proper help, care for themselves in the outside world.

With those children, orphans of an army she had once led, she was happy. She smiled when they had healed enough mentally and physically to laugh, and Gara smiled with her. She whirled into a mad rage when she came upon the murderers and none withstood her wrath. And Gara took vengeance with her. He was content, because she, to a certain degree was. When she laughed with him, or smiled at one of his wry witticisms, his heart soared. He did not expect more of her, because he did not know if she were capable of more, so he took what she offered. He took her friendship, which she had always given and cherished it.

Life was good. There were enemies to banish which well deserved it and a woman near at hand which he held in highest regard. It was only one day, deep into fall, when snow had already began to sprinkle down upon the evergreen forests of the Eastern Mountains, that he had a sense of premonition. He was not generally one to foresee the future. It was not a magic he possessed. His magics were more guttural and earthy and not at all the spectacular thing that Arshes commanded. But he felt something all the same. He sat at camp with ten of his ninja, four days south of his main compound and quite suddenly thought of Yoko. She drifted into his mind and he shivered, for dread omen accompanied her ghostly presence. All day he rode with the thoughts that something was wrong with Yoko nagging at his mind. By the evening, after he and his men had found the band of beast-men they had been tracking, the sense of wrongness was overwhelming.

He sent two of his men back to the main fort to tell Arshes where he had gone and with the rest he sat out southward, towards the green meadows of Meta-Rikan.

Four days journey and he reached the main eastern trade road and stopped at one of the various road stations to resupply. The guards manning the past were unprepared for his visit. They were nervous and wary at the presence of the Lord Protector of the East and his ninja's in their barracks. They were quick enough to fulfill his requests for fresh mounts and enough supplies to tide them over for a journey to Meta-Rikan.

It was only after another day's travel that a band of men met them on the road. Armed holy guard and several men in priestly robes.

"My lord Gara." A priest held up his hand in greeting, and Gara lifted thick brows at the obvious foreknowledge of his passage. From the look of men and horses they had ridden hard to intercept them on this road.

"You head down the road to Meta-Rikan?" The priest asked. It was an obvious destination, since nothing else of import existed beside this road, but Meta-Rikan, seventy odd miles to the south.

"I do. Have priests taken to surveying travelers nowadays? What business is it of yours?"

"Business of the regency of the southern alliance, my lord." The priest replied smoothly, though the armed guard at his back showed signs of quiet unease. Rightly so, confronting Gara. Even though their numbers were greater than his, there could be no doubt in any of their minds where the greater force lay. Not with the well oiled hilt of the Murasame blade protruding from a scabbard at his back.

"What business, prey tell?"

"A delicate foray into truce with the bandit kingdoms of the west coast. His majesty, King Larz has invited the seven bandit kings into Meta-Rikan with assurances of no hostility. Your presence in Meta-Rikan, my lord, would surely be perceived as a threat and might shatter all hope of alliance."

"Alliance with a bunch of thieves and pirates? Why is he bothering?" Gara snorted in disbelief. "Better to rally forces and send them all to join their ancestors. They'll only stab him in the back when the chance arises."

"Be that as it may, my most gracious lord Gara," the priest made a sign of blessing in the air before him. "The King asks that you, nor any other force that might be perceived as a gathering of might, heed his wishes and stay away from Meta-Rikan until the parlay is over."

"And when might that be?"

"Send a messenger in a week or so to see. One never knows with political bargaining."

Gara scanned the faces of the men before him. Grim faced guards and the passive faced priests, both of whom wore about their persons the symbols of the High God. The new religion. Since when did the king use priests as his messengers?

"All right. My business can wait."

There was an visible exhalation of relief among the men at arms. The priest smiled sweetly. "If there was business you had to attend, you might conduct it though me. I return to the city in a few days time."

"No. Nothing of import." He held his hand with and with a sharp motion directed his men to turn about. They rode away from the holy guard without a backward glance.

"If they've sense, they'll follow a ways to make sure I kept to my word." He told his commander when they'd gone a goody distance. Go back to the compound and tell Lady Nei that something is up in Meta-Rikan. Tell her, if her curiosity is aroused, to use discretion."

"And where will you be, lord Gara?" The commander asked with the air of a man who knew very well the answer to his question.

"Meta-Rikan."

"Alone?"

"Of course. I would hate to bring a force of arms that might chase the bandits from the walls of that fair city. They'll never know I was there, my friend. Now go and deliver my message to the lady."

He veered sharply from the road towards a copse of trees that would hide his divergence from any following them. If he had felt a wrongness before it was ten fold now. There was most certainly something afoot in the deep south.

The last time Lily had seen her family was when she was four. They stood on the thin, muddy road beside the thatch hut that had been her home, watching as the slaver they had sold her to for rice and flour to last them another hard winter, carried her away. She was never certain if she cherished the memory or hated it. But she kept it close to her heart, for it was all she had of who she had been. She was no one now, because slaves had no identity. None but at the whim of their masters. Fifteen years a slave and she had forgotten what it was like to be free. It hardly mattered anymore. One became used to the submission. She had a skill and a passion that made her valuable. She had the gift of song and the power to sway men's moods with her voice. It was, she had been told on occasion more than a natural talent. It had the taste of magic, her song and her ability to latch onto the mood of her audience. Her first master had sold her when she was eight to a traveling company of performers, where she had learned instruments and dance and the secrets of goading coin from an audience. Then she had been bought by a lord, who had seen her perform and coveted her for his own. She had been a lovely, dark young girl then, thirteen winters old. She had sung for him and warmed his bed and never once cried for it. It was the lot of a slave. Her final master, the mage Vernon, had sensed the magic her voice carried and bartered for her, trading his magical services -- the lord's son at the time had been cursed with impotence and the lord feared ever having grandchildren to which he might hand down his lands. She had serious doubts whether Vernon had actually cured the impotence or only made it seem so, for the morning after the lord's son had successfully bedded his wife, Vernon had made haste from his lands with Lily in tow.

For two years she had been the slave of a hedge mage, earning more often than not more coin from her song than he did plying his arcane trade. It had gotten worse for him the last few years, what with the public opinion of magic souring with the advent of the Prophet's teachings. There were cities and towns in the far south that he dared not show his face. He lamented about how rich the pickings had been a mere ten years past. She never commented one way or another, not being one for useless talk. She had learned that a slave spoke when spoken to. Her expression was her song. She was content enough in that single outlet of emotion.

Lily was nineteen years old. She thought she might pass twenty in the possession of Vernon the hedge mage, but it was not to be so. Judas had not yet come to the point of it's southern sister, Meta-Rikan in banning the practice of witchery, and yet with one simple and harmless incantation by Vernon the both of them found themselves in the custody of the holy guard, waiting miserably for the censure of Judas's high priest. Only Judas high priest did not come. The man that came to see them wore the symbol of the High God at his breast and wore the dust of the road on his robes. Guards of a different nature crowded the room, mingling with the holy guard who had apprehended them.

Vernon winced squeamishly, looking from face to face with the air of man who lived his worst nightmare. He could not quite meet the eyes of the priest in charge. Lily could not and stared mutely at the floor, forgotten behind her master.

"You saw him?" The priest demanded of Vernon.

"Saw who, your grace?" Vernon's usually haughty voice broke.

"Dark Schneider, you foul warlock."

Vernon blinked, shocked. He opened his mouth and shut it, speechless. "Dark -- he's dead. Everyone knows that. How would I see ---"

"Shut up. A man and a woman. He would be hard to miss. Striking of feature, long silver hair. She would have reddish hair and brown eyes. Beautiful. You bargained with her at a tavern."

Vernon couldn't stop blinking. "I saw them-- yes. But he wasn't -- he had no magic -- I would have felt it -- he could not have been."

"What did they wish of you?"

"He wore wards on his wrists. She wanted me to break them. I couldn't."

"No doubt. What else did they say?"

"Nothing. Nothing, my lord. I swear by the name of god."

"Never utter the name of god, you foul practitioner of the black arts." The holy priest cried out and touched Vernon on the forehead. Vernon squeaked, his eyes bulged then almost seemed to shrink in their sockets, steam escaping them. He fell to his knees, then toppled over onto his face, quite, quite dead.

The only ones who seemed shocked were the holy guards of Judas. The men who had come with this dire and frightening priest moved not at all. The priest's eyes turned to Lily. He strode across to her and she huddled against the wall, head down, straight dark hair obscuring her face.

"And what are you?"

"A minstrel, your holiness." One of the Judas priests murmured.

He reached out and touched her jaw, lifting it so that he might see her face. "A minstrel. And something more, I think. I have a weakness for song." He let her go, turned and spoke sharp orders to his men, who scrambled in orderly fashion to do his bidding. Someone came and took her arm, one of _his _ men. She thought she had a new master. A powerful and terrifying one. They pulled her past the body of Vernon and would not even let her pause to shut his wide, open eyes. For the first time since she had been sold to her first master, she felt like crying. But she did not. She had learned long ago, that tears only worked for pampered, free women, not for the likes of her.

Yoko shuddered with effort, sweat beading her forehead, hands shaking as she sought to master a spell that should have taken weeks of study and preparation even to attempt. Spell casting was not an easy labor, even the simple ones, which Schneider assured her this was. If it were effortless then everyone would be doing it. The only thing that saved the world from being filled with magic happy wizards was the fact that it was damned hard. Even if one was born with the gift of power. It took concentration and faith and a stamina of spirit that would wreck a weaker person. Not to mention meticulous analyzation and groundwork.

"I -- I think I got it that time." She breathed as she lowered her hands and stared at the dull metal bracelets on his wrists, which rested on a moss covered long between them. The two of them knelt on either side of the log. His eyes gauged her, considering. He had to take her at her word, himself having no ability to discover for himself if the Trace spell had been clouded.

They were deep in the forest, almost a half day's travel from Judas. There had been no sound of pursuit yet. Which did not mean none was on their trail. Which in turn meant more riding. Yoko was sore and tired and wished she had done more riding during the past three years instead of sedately existing within the confines of Meta-Rikan. Her legs ached abominably. She rose with a groan and a miserable glare at the horse which had caused her pain. The animal placidly returned the stare, mouth full of leaves it had stripped from a nearby tree.

Schneider put his hands on her shoulders, fingers kneading sore flesh. "Are you all right?"

"No." She moaned. "I want a hot bath."

"You missed your chance." He murmured next to her ear. She shivered all over, from the touch, from his breath on her skin. With a little grimace she slipped out of his grasp and started towards the horse.

"We might as well get going again. I don't know how we're going to get east from here. Gara's probably already in Meta-Rikan, wondering where _WE_ are."

"No -- he's not."

There was something in his voice that made her catch her breath. She turned, looked up at his face. He diverted his glance from hers, tightening his lips.

"What do you mean?" she asked in a small voice.

"Your messenger never got through, Yoko."

"How -- how do you know?"

"Angelo told me. I'm sorry."

"I don't understand. I sent Linden east secretly. The Prophet wouldn't have known."

"He knew because he can pull thoughts out of people's minds, Yoko. He intercepted him. He killed him probably, because he was your ally and mine. Gara doesn't know."

It was like he had hit her in the stomach. She staggered back against the horse, pain in her gut rushing up to her chest like a heart attack. No. No. She could not have sent Linden to his death. She could not have been responsible for that.

"You don't know he's dead." She whispered.

"Angelo told me he was. I believed him. I'm sorry."

"You're sorry?" she cried. "He trusted me. He did it for me and was killed for it. He was my friend." The tears came, spilling down her cheeks, invading her mouth with their salty taste. Her throat felt raw. She had killed Linden. It was her hand that had sent him out and her fault he was dead. Schneider reached out for her and she slapped his hand away.

"Don't. Just don't." She hissed. "You don't care. What's one more death to you?"

She snatched the reins and started walking, not having the strength to mount, what with her legs shaking and her vision blurred from tears. He followed, but she hardly heard. At the moment she hated him, because whenever he came into her life death and destruction followed. She wiped a sleeve across her eyes, sniffling back her sorrow. The horse nuzzled at her shoulder. It left a great wet spot of saliva on her cloak. She drew a shaky breath and asked.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"The time didn't seem right."

"The time---?

"I didn't want to upset you."

She whirled, a sudden hysterical rage upon her. "Upset me? How dare you make that judgment for me. What give you the right to decide what I can deal with and what I can't. I've lived long enough without your protection to survive just fine without it now. How dare you?" The more she talked, the angrier she got.

She slammed the heels of her hands into his chest hard enough to make him stagger a step backwards. "Don't ever presume not to upset me again." She cried. "Go be valiant to someone who wants it like Arshes or Sheela. Damn you!!" She tried to hit him again and he caught her this time before she could land a blow, pulling into the circle of his arms. She struggled, furiously fighting the embrace, crying and cursing, until he braced himself against a tree to gain better leverage to control her in her frenzy.

It got through to her finally that he was whispering over and over. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." And she didn't know what for. Linden's death, her guilt, her rage. His own lack of remorse where mortal men's lives were at stake. She sobbed and collapsed against him, fists tangled in the material of his cloak. He slid down the tree, holding her cradled against him, solid strength where her own was all shuddery and fleeting. Another time and he might have taken advantage of the closeness, of her desperate presence in his arms, but now, she had unnerved him. She could sense it in his body, in the cadence of his breathing.

He held her and did nothing more than hold her until the tears dried up and the trembling ceased. After that, she pulled away, exhausted and stripped of emotion and stared at him. His eyes were wary, uncertain how to deal with the depths of her grief. Not sure where he stood in the hierarchy of blame she placed for Linden's death. He was there, to be certain, but held not so high a place as she did herself.

"We've got to go." She whispered hoarsely. "We've wasted enough time." She struggled out of his arms, climbed to her feet and went to her horse. He followed, slowly. She did not look back. She stared into the darkening shadows of the forest ahead, displaced and disheartened. Before, she had felt hope. Now she felt as if the world were closing in on her. She had known Angelo hated Schneider, but she had not known the lengths he would go to prevent succor. She had not known fully, what monster whispered in the ear of her king and sat at the head of the new religion all of the south had embraced. She wanted to know. Schneider knew more than he was telling, of that she was sure. Quietly she asked.

"Tell me about the Prophet."

[NEXT ][1]

   [1]: aftermath15.htm



	15. Chapter Fifteen

aftermath15

**Fifteen**

"What is it?" Yoko stared at the ground under her horse's hooves. There was a deep gouge in the earth, perhaps fourteen feet wide that wound through the trees, scarring the bark from trunks some three feet high.

Schneider frowned down at it, peering into the sunlight dappled shadows of the forest into which the trail disappeared. He had never seen the like and he had been witness to a good many incredible things. This looked like nothing less than some great snake had slithered its way through the wood, leaving bruised trees and scratched earth in its path. He was aware of the existence of no such snakes. Not in this world, at any rate.

He pushed hair behind his ears and shook his head. "I don't know."

Yoko shuddered, spurring her horse up the opposite side of the indention to join him. "There are things that have appeared since -- since Ansasla was defeated. Strange things that no one has ever seen before."

"Things like what?"

She shrugged, wrapped in her cloak, her hood half obscuring her face against the chill. "Creatures that never existed before. Father thinks that a rent was formed when you were fighting Ansasla. A tear into another world that never has quite healed. He thinks the strange things that people are seeing more and more in the lands are coming across that rent. We haven't seen so many in the south, but the rumors of odd creatures in the less civilized lands are growing."

He rode for a while in silence, thinking that Geo Note could very likely be right. There had been a great altering of things during that final battle. A rent could very well have been made. If he'd had his power, he might have tracked it down and sealed it. God forbid that anyone else had the presence of mind to do it.

At least Yoko was talking again. For a while she had rode in silence, a dour, depressing companion. Two days into the forest and the trees grew older and larger, the underbrush more strangled from lack of proper light reaching the forest floor. They were into the Great Forest now, the oldest woodland on the continent. It had been here during the age of old. Probably long, long before that. Forests had the habit of outliving generations of men.

They had roots and mushrooms for dinner, with berries for desert. Yoko refused to use any of her magics to hunt a livelier dinner. She would not kill with her gift. He thought she was being overly prudish, but one could hardly tell her that in the face of her recent trauma. So he ate the things she gathered without much enthusiasm. He stared at her across the small fire they had made, trying to fathom her moods and her disposition towards him. With anyone else he would hardly have bothered. No one else, no other lover or friend had quite the ability to affect him with the mere swing of their mood. Yoko, he catered to, for some unknown reason -- it was often beyond his understanding why it mattered so much what she thought of him. He hated her censure. He despised her sad sighs and her refusal to met his eyes, when she was usually so bold in her opinions. Other than physically comforting her, which she would not allow, he was at a loss at how to make things better. He had never bothered to learn the subtle ways of soothing the hurt feelings of others. It had never been a concern of his.

So they were silent companions, Yoko lost in her own moody soul searching and he despairing of ever getting his magic back. With it things had always worked out so much better. He could fix the wrongs that bothered her if he had his power. He was certain of it.

They rode out the next morning with a fine mist in the air that added bit to the usual chill. Bird song twittered through the leaves. A pair of squirrels played tag over their heads, dislodging leaves that fluttered down gracefully in their path. Yoko smiled at the antics and Schneider felt ridiculously beholden to a pair of furry rodents for causing the reaction. He nudged his mount closer to hers, thinking to initiate some inane conversation. Anything to draw out her good humor.

And rather suddenly the squirrels disappeared and the birdsong ceased. Yoko hardly noticed it. Schneider frowned, staring at the leafy canopy overhead.

With no more warning than a rustle of leaves, from out of the foliage a tree swung out at them. It hit his horse, square in the chest, sending the animal staggering into Yoko's mount, then sprawling off its feet when her horse shied backwards, screaming in equine fear. The animal slammed against the bole of a tree and only blind luck saved Schneider from being crushed between it and ungiving wood. The fates were damned kind to see that his leg, instead of being trapped under the weight of the horse body was merely pinned under the limp neck. Breath was hard in coming, from the impact of the fall, and he hadn't the presence of mind to do more at first that stare dumbly at the foliage where the blow at originated. Foliage which parted to reveal the towering form of a giant, who held a club longer than Schneider's body in its meaty fist. It had to stood to get under the intercrossed branches of the lower pine limbs, standing some eighteen feet in height and some eight feet in width at the shoulders. Its face, in the brief glimpse he got of it, was much like any giant's face, broad and thick boned, with overhanging brow and small, dull eyes. Its mouth was filled with rotting, yellowed teeth, which were revealed when it opened it to scream out a battle cry. One step out of the brush and it was almost on them. The club, which was no less than the trunk of a good sized tree came down towards Schneider, ready to finish the job the first strike had started. He pulled at his leg desperately, heard Yoko scream from near by and the club smashed down.

And rebounded off the invisible shell of a shield of her making. She was off her frightened horse, mindless as it bolted from the protection of her shield, and on her knees beside the bloody head of his own downed and very dead mount.

"Are you all right?" Her fingers grasped the mane and helped shift the dead weight of the head and neck off his leg. He didn't answer -- the club coming down again, backed by all the rage of a giant's frustration. She shuddered, flinching back. The power of the impact that rocked her shield, rocking her body as well. He scrambled over the horse to crouch behind her, grasping her shoulders to shore her up.

"Tell me you've got something offensive you can throw at him?"

Another blow, this one two handed, as the giant realized it was up against something not of a natural character. The thing was dressed in scrapes of fur and cloth that had been haphazardly sewn together with thick ropes. Yoko cried out. She had never studied offensive spells. She did not have attack spells in her arsenal and with a few more blows the giant would shatter her shield and the both of them would be paste.

"Illumina." He cried. "Throw Illumina in its face as strong as you can, then run after your damned horse and don't look back. I'll draw it off from you."

"No." She moaned.

"Do it, Yoko." His fingers tightened on her shoulders as the club came down again, bouncing off the shield a mere feet over their heads. Damned disconcerting to sit here helpless, under the weakening shields of another, with no recourse but flight.

She took a breath as it raised the club over its head for another strike, then cried out the single summoning word. A blare of intense white light appeared outside the shield and with a sharp gesture of her hand it flared into the giant's face. The creature cried out, loosing its grip on the makeshift club, clutching at its eyes in sudden pain.

Schneider pushed her to her feet, shoving her roughly in the general direction her horse had fled. She followed his directions for once, running madly through the trees, never once turning her head to look back. He hesitated a moment in his own flight, drawing his sword, even though he didn't know what good it would do against a giant, but certain that the creature would pursue the prey that had thorns before it would hunt down the more seemingly helpless. It blinked away the blindness and Schneider struck out at its legs, cutting a thin slash across its thighs before bolting away into the forest with its cries of rage behind him.

It had longer legs. It could cover considerably more ground than he in fewer strides. The only thing he had going for him was the close confines of the forest, which he could slip through without slowing, while his pursuer had to either ram his way past or go around.

The trees were a blur in his vision. His breath came painful and hard. There were a hundred little scrapes and scratches from the bramble he tore through and he cursed the fates that had ever stripped his power from him. Oh, how miserable to be a normal, mortal man with no more connection to the arcane realm than to the elusive gods they all worshipped. There were a dozen minor spells that could have wiped this annoying giant from the face of the earth. They trembled on his lips and he could not utter them for fear of the wards on his wrists throwing the power right back at him, either killing him outright or incapacitating him long enough for the giant to do it.

He heard it closing the gap and thought how humiliating it would be to be killed by a mere, slow-witted giant. No matter what realm he ended up in, he would forever carry that shame with him.

There was a gully ahead. A wide, deep gully with steep, muddy slopes that dropped down to a forest stream. There was no jumping it. All he could do was slide down one muddy slope, loosing his footing on the slick dirt and ending up on his knees at the edge of the stream, then scrambling up and splashing across thigh high water to the other side and a higher slope leading to escape. One look over his shoulder and the Giant was almost to the gully. He could not climb that muddy slope in time. He grasped a root and pulled himself up, used it as leverage for his boot and grasped after dirt and rock for more support, threw his sword up and over the edge and made a concerted lunge for the small roots protruding there. Pulled himself up and almost over the lip as the giant screamed in victory and made to jump the gully and land on top of him. Almost made it, but its great foot slipped in the mud and it miscalculated the leap, falling just short of the other side, slipping more when it landed and crashing down, its chin slamming with a distinctive crack against the opposite lip where Schneider scrambled for footing. He found himself staring the giant in the eyes, the giant's somewhat dazed from the fall, blood seeping out from between its slack lips where it had bitten its tongue.

Schneider looked about frantically for the sword, found it even as the giant was blinking awareness back into its eyes, and thrust it into its face, piercing the left eye almost up to the hilt. The tip lodging the back of the giant's skull would not let the blade slide deeper. A cry almost issued from the torn lips, but died quickly, even as the giant did, its brain destroyed.

Schneider sat back, legs sprawled, hands supporting his weight on the pine littered forest floor. There was blood seeping over the hilt of his sword. And the giant was slowly beginning to slide backwards into the gully. He reached out, grabbing the sword hilt to save it from going with down with the giant. Almost had it yanked out of his hands as the tip lodged in bone refused to let go. It did, with a pop and he was left with the gore covered thing on the ground between his legs. His hands were shaking from reaction. He had destroyed greater things than this without a blink of the eye, and yet this one victory, which had achieved without a drop of magic had him trembling. He laughed. Dropped the sword and laughed, a surge of adrenaline that had been all but gone welling up in him at the purely mundane victory.

For a long while he sat there, laughing, then cleaned the blood off the sword with leaves and pine tags. There was the sound of crinkled leaves and twigs snapping from the other side of the gully. Slight sounds. A small creature passing, not a large one.

Yoko appeared through the trees, eyes wild, bramble tangled in her hair. Her eyes took in the scene, passed over the slumped form of the giant damming the path of the stream, lifted to him still sitting on the far lip. She swallowed and scrambled down the slope, wisely avoided the form of the giant as she sloshed across the stream and started to struggle up the other side. Schneider stirred to activity, going to the edge and reaching down a hand for her to grasp and pulling her up by main force alone, since her feet slipped madly in the slick mud.

"I couldn't find the stupid horse." She cried, flinging herself against him, wrapping her arms about his neck and clinging tight. "Oh, goddess, goddess, you're so stupid. I thought you were dead."

He sighed, resting his chin on the top of her head. "Not so easy as that, to kill me. At least to keep me dead." He added.

She pulled back, looking up at him critically, reached up to finger a thin briar scratch on his cheek. "Well stop trying so damned hard, would you. You like to drive me crazy."

She smiled at him. At him and not at the antics of some damned squirrel, and it made the whole hectic thing worth it. Now if he could just get her to rub the ache out of his shoulders ----

Sta-Veron sat at the crux of two mountain ranges, where the Eastern Mountains turned into the Great Northern Range and the God's Tooth mountains, which bordered the tundra to the extreme north, collided with those more milder ridges. It formed a great valley of cold, snow bound lands that were protected on either side by the formidable barrier of mountains. It was not a pleasant land to live. It was frigid nine out of twelve months of the year and only tolerably warm those other elusive weeks. The people of the north were a hard folk, tempered by a climate the people of the warm south shivered just to think of. A fair number of the people were nomadic and predatory, hunters that moved with the game and owed no man allegiance. The others carved villages and towns out of the snow, drawn to the north by its lure of riches. The diamond mines of the God's Tooth range were legendary. Gold littered the high cold streams of the Great Northern mountains. Though few in the south much entertained the thought of living the cold north, they did relish the trade friendship with it brought. Exotic furs, gems and gold were a enticement to any man.

Contrary to the opinion of the south, Sta-Veron was not a barbaric, desolate city, riddled by the winds down from the Tundra. Though it did not in any way boast the size of the jewels of the south, its walls were thick and high and its streets wide and clean. Its houses were orderly and well constructed to keep the cold out, and its people well protected and content under the rule of their enigmatic lord. They spoke of _Him_ -with hushed tones, full of respect, for he had made Sta-Veron into a city that was proud and strong. He brought magic and riches from years of conquest in the south and west back to cold Sta-Veron and he hoarded it not, like many an ambitious lord might, but used it to enhance the city.

They did not know if they loved their lord, for he was sullen and moody and often they never saw him for months at a time, but they respected him and would defend his name to any who dared slander it. He was not like them in any respect, not hardened and weather lined, no gruffness at all to him, more a refined, quiet elegance. He did not even show the years that they knew he possessed, instead showing the face of fresh youth, but that was only the wizardly core of him showing though. The people of the North were not frightened by the arcane.

He sat in his castle above the sprawled houses and businesses of his folk and drifted in solitude. His servants were wary to disturb him. Sometimes for days at a time, he spoke no word to any living being. He had books from all over the world, scrolls of ancient and arcane things. Books older than that and rarer, which he found fascinating and poured over with fanatic zeal. The library was the warmest place in the castle, from the mere number of things that crowded in it. The other rooms were stark and cold in their decoration.

He spent most of his time in the library. The walls were lined with books. A treasure trove more valuable than all the gems in the mountains, when it came right down to it. He sat behind a great, carved desk, a thick book open before him. A witch light hovered over his shoulder, brighter and easier on the eyes than reading by candlelight. In the comfort of his own home, he dressed casually, in a thick, soft robe, over loose pants and tunic. There was a cup of mulled wine by his hand, brought by a silent servant, who crept in on cat's feet and disappeared as silently.

It was a book of spells. Most of them were unintelligible to his understanding, even after weeks of scrutiny. Spells were like that. If a body and a mind were not oriented towards a certain type of spell casting, then they would forever be unattainable. He, for all his vaunted power, was useless at casting fire oriented spells. They just escaped him. He was too intertwined with the aura of the Ice magic he did excel at. It didn't matter how long a body studied, it just didn't work. Even his mentor, Schneider, who had lived 400 years and who was primarily a fire mage, could not manage a decent Cold spell.

Kall-Su sighed, rubbing at the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger to drive away the ache of reading all through the night and into the early morning. It was a habit he had taken up over the last year or so, staying up the long night, putting sleep off until exhaustion drove him to it. He dreamed less that way.

Outside the frosted window he could see drifting flakes of snow. The stuff was already piled up in the streets. It was going to be a cold winter. There was a soft knock at the door. The captain of his guard slipped in, bundled for the weather, his face still holding the chaffing recently being in the cold.

"My lord." Kiro inclined his head respectfully, but wasted no more time than that on honorifics, instead striding to the desk and standing before it in a business like manner.

"Yes." Kall-Su asked.

"There are reports of another one in the mountains. Nomads saw it this time. From what they saw, and I believe them, it was bigger than the last."

Kall sighed closing the book, putting a marker in his place. Not even full winter and already the creatures that lived in the high colds were coming down to warmer climes and plaguing his folk. Only they were not the normal beasts these past few years. They were things that had no name in the tongue of men, hideous, gruesome things that belonged in another place. Things that had come with the passing of Ansasla. He could feel the faint presence of the rent that had swallowed the god of destruction. He knew without a doubt that small, sibilant things slipped through on occasion. He would not get near it, that place where Ansasla had gone. He had been taken over by it once, and would not risk the magnetic pull of its presence again. It was gone from this plane and would stay gone, and the little things that passed through could be dealt with.

"Where was it seen?"

"On the north side of the Great Northern Mountains, not far from Hesranha town. If it's like the last, it will be drawn to the people in the town."

It needed to be destroyed. The last one, the smaller one, if reports were true, had killed a dozen of his men before they had taken it down. He had no wish to deplete Kiro's forces more.

"Prepare a party. We'll leave tomorrow morning."

Kiro lifted a brow, pleased. "You'll lead us, my lord?"

Kall-Su nodded once, ignoring his captain's obvious satisfaction. He was well aware that Kiro thought he closeted himself too much of late in the castle. In this very room. And it did matter, that opinion, deep down where Kall-Su secreted his inner most feelings, behind a thick armor of imperious disdain for the rest of the world. It mattered a great deal what Kiro, and Rysen, his chief steward and the people of the town and his far away friends thought of him, only he never allowed it to the surface. If he did and they censured him, it hurt too much. It brought back the flickering traces of memory of a time where he had known nothing but censure and he was no more able to tolerate that, than he was the nightmares that tormented him. So his facade of ice stayed firmly in place. None were ever the wiser what their lord truly felt.

They rode down from the castle and through the streets of Sta-Veron, warmly clothed for harsh weather, on thick-furred, heavy mountain horses that could wade through snow chest high if need be. People were out in the gray of early morning, clearing the streets and the paths between houses and shops of snow, carrying bundles of wood inside for fires, and trudging to work. They looked up at the passing of the well bundled party, curious perhaps of the destination of armed men with pack horses for a long ride, but not overly so. Garlands decorated the doorways, in preparation of winter festival not more four weeks away.

Out the main gates, where snow had been shoveled into high piles to open the twin gates and beyond that was a stretch of pure whiteness that seemed to go on forever. In the far distance it met the sky, white to gray.

They set out at a mile eating trot that the horses could maintain for hours. Kall's great warhorse tossed his shaggy head in delight to be out after so long in the stables. He kicked snow with his massive hooves and pulled at the rein, eager to be allowed a faster pace. It was invigorating to be out himself, and he gave in to the simple eagerness of the horse and loosened the rein. The war horse broke into a pounding canter and the rest of the party followed suit, snow flying up behind them. His men were in good cheer. He found himself tempted into it by the crispness of the morning and the good natured chatter of his soldiers.

An omen, Kall thought, of good things to come.

Schneider was limping. Not much, he was hiding it to a certain degree, his pride not wanting her to see that he hurt, but Yoko noticed anyway. The horse falling on him, then the mad flight through the forest with a giant on his heels had taken its toll. Tonight, if he complained of it, she would attempt a healing spell. She doubted he would let her, being prideful and male, the two combined making for a stubborn streak when it came to a woman's pity.

She gathered berries as they walked, trusting him to be alert to the dangers of the forest, which she was certain now there were a great many of. She would pluck a handful, of which she would give him the majority, and slowly eat the remainder. They passed a brook, not quite as steep as the one he had slain the giant in and paused to drink. She searched the banks for mud-hen nests and found two ripe with eggs. She harvested half of what she found, not wishing to deprive a hen of all her hatchlings, and counted on roasted egg for dinner as a change from tubers and mushrooms.

It was near dark by the time he found a place he felt safe to stop for the night. He made a fire the old fashioned way -- it galled him to have to strike flint to stone, that was clear -- and she wrapped the precious eggs in leaves and nestled them on the outside coals of the little campfire. She gave him four and had two herself and sat on the opposite side of the fire from him after that listening to the sounds of the forest night dwellers as they came awake for an evening of hunting and courting.

He rubbed absently at his leg.

"I can try a healing, if it pains you overmuch." She said. He shook his head.

"No. It's not bad. Just bruised. There is a kink in my shoulder." He rotated a shoulder hopefully. She sighed, hiding a smile and moved around the fire to kneel behind him.

"Here?"

"Lower."

He discarded the cloak so she could better work on him. She kneaded flesh and muscle and he purred under the attention. She was careful around his ribs, remembering the nasty bruise there.

"Why won't you let me use a healing spell on you?"

He leaned his head back, looking at her from that odd angle. Hair fell over her hands and wrists and she absently gathered it together, twisting it into a thick silver rope.

"I've an aversion to spells being cast on me. Not that I don't trust you -- I do -- it just makes me nervous."

"Something makes _You_ -nervous? More nervous than excruciating pain?"

"I can deal with pain."

She placed the hair over his shoulder, fingers straying to his neck. He leaned back against her, reaching behind him to run his hands along her folded legs. _Oh, goddess_, she thought, _this will go beyond comforting. How do I stop it? Do I want to stop it?_ She leaned down and her lips almost brushed his --

-- and the sense of something watching intruded upon her awareness. She froze with her fingers on the pulse of his throat, and felt a _Presence_ .

"Yoko?" he murmured. She moved her fingers over his lips to shush him, and whispered against his ear.

"There's something out there."

He shifted, staring out into the night. She knelt behind him with her fingers in his shirt, listening for the sound of it and hearing nothing but the normal sounds of the night. But she knew it was out there. She sensed it as she sensed her own presence or his.

"Yoko, there's nothing." He looked down at her. She shook her head.

"No. It's there. Can't you feel it?"

"How do you feel it?"

She slapped a palm against her chest. "In here. Something is watching us."

He did not dispute that cryptic claim, too much a creature of mythical portents to dismiss the augur of another. "Where?" he asked quietly.

"I don't know. All around us."

"Do you sense ill-intent?"

She shook her head, not knowing. A gust of sudden wind blew the fire out, scattering sparks in its wake. She gasped. He snatched for his cloak and scrambled to his feet. Reached out to grab her hand and haul her up with him.

"What is it?" she moaned, as frightened of this elusive presence as she had been of the all too solid giant.

"Something --- something." His eyes were shadowed pits with the death of the fire. The wind gusted again, blowing leaves and forest debris at them with gale force. Yoko cried out, shielding her face, staggering a step backwards. He pulled her away from the source of the wind, abandoning their small camp. She ran blindly, the trees black shadows against the dark of the night. He swore once, rebounding off the trunk of a tree. She caught at him and pushed him on, desperate to escape the presence that followed them. The wind rattled the leaves, making smaller trees sway and branches creak overhead.

There was a faint light ahead. A hazy glow that made the shadows gray instead of black. She felt him hesitate when he saw that illumination, undecided whether to travel on towards it or veer away. Wind tore at their backs, driving twigs and pine cones past them. Driving them towards the light. She did not want to go of a sudden, and he certainly did not, digging his heels in when the staggering wind wanted to push them forward. He tried to veer away from it, but a maelstrom of debris was swept up, creating a wall of swirling leaves.

With the force of nature at their backs they had no choice but to go forward. Into the small glade where fuzzy white light cast everything in a strange glow. The moment they stepped into the light, the wind ceased. It did not go away, for when Yoko turned to look behind her the wall of swirling debris was a furious barrier around the small clearing. It circled the whole clearing in fact, like they stood in the eye of a tornado, only no slightest breeze intruded to lift their hair.

"Goddess." Yoko breathed, holding tight to Schneider's hand. He turned about, glaring at the trees, the sky, the whirl wind that had driven them here and demanded.

"What do you want?"

A mist seeped up from the ground under their feet. Yoko hopped back with a little yelp, and Schneider took a more dignified step backwards, eyes narrowing as the mist rose in cohesive form and swirled around them. Slowly, it brushed their bodies, leaving behind a warm mist on skin where it touched. There was something deep and all invasive in the presence she felt. Something that was elusive and at the same time inescapable.

It took form, a ghostly, translucent shape of an unclothed woman. She reached out smoky fingers and grazed Yoko's cheek, trailed her fingers across Schneider's chest. He waved a hand through the smoke, displacing her arm. A tinkle of laughter echoed through the wood. She pulled back from them and solidified. A lilth, ageless woman with hair that tumbled like green water down her back and over her shoulders.

_You've killed in my forest_.. She said, her voice seeming to come at them from a dozen points about the clearing. Yoko stared at her, at a loss.

"I killed a giant, who attacked us first." Schneider said promptly, in full control of his wits.

_He was my servant. He had a task._ The strange woman said.

"Who are you?"

The laughter tinkled again, though she never seemed to open her mouth. _I? I am the Lady of this Forest. Glyncara_..

Glen Cara. It was the old name of the Great Forest. Yoko opened her mouth in wonderment. "Glen Car IS the forest."

The woman inclined her head. _So I am. You've killed a servant of mine in my wood. You trespass where I no longer wish men to walk._

"Since when is it outlawed to travel through the great forest?" Schneider asked archly, and Yoko wanted to shake him, because this thing they faced was not a lovely, naked woman but something much older. Much older than even him. As old as the oldest tree in this wood and as powerful as all the quiet force of the forest.

_Since men strive to destroy it._ The colors of Glyncara's eyes shifted from moss green to bark brown and all the colors of the wood in-between. There was a flare of fury there and danger to them. The winds outside the clearing picked up.

"What men?" Schneider asked.

_The men who raze the forest and leave nothing behind but stumps and broken ground. Who drive the animals away with their presence and their saws and their fires. Who slice the flesh of my trees and send them down the river -- corpses -- beautiful corpses -- to other men who might butcher them again._

She spoke of the trees as though they were alive. To her, they probably were.

"We're not those men." Yoko said in a small voice. "We mean you no harm. We're sorry about your giant. We didn't know."

_It matters not. Those who enter my wood have sealed their fate._

"Then why don't you destroy these men who chop down your trees yourself?" Schneider demanded. "Instead of bothering us, who haven't toppled a single tree. She won't even kill a rabbit for dinner."

Glyncara's eyes flashed and some tendril of power coiled out to lash at Schneider for his impudence. He staggered a step backwards, grimacing.

_I have power here, in the heart of my wood, but closer to the fringe, where they do their damage, my strength wanes. And as they cut acre after acre of my forest down, I die. So every human who enters my power shall die, as my trees die._

Her form started to dissolve and a sense of tremendous power washed over them. Yoko felt her breath catch in her throat against her will. There was a pain in her chest, as of a fist contracting about her heart.

"Wait!" Schneider cried out. "We can help you."

The pain subsided. Glyncara resolidified marginally. Her voice came out of the woods at them. _How? You're bound yourself with those hideous things on your wrists._

"You can feel the wards?" he asked, a touch of amazement creeping into his tone.

_They are abominations._

"Can you remove them?"

Glyncara's shoulders lifted. _Perhaps._

"Do so and I will rid your forest of every threat that comes at it. I will place it under my protection."

_And is your protection so great, you who destroy lands and peoples?_

He stared at her, off guard. "It will be if I so promise."

_Do you know the meaning of a promise?"_--she whispered. _In your heart, can you honor an oath?"_

"I can."

_We shall see. I'll take your offer. You will stop the threat to my wood and I shall let you go._

"The wards?"

_I don't think you know the meaning of an oath just yet. Stop the threat with the wards in place and then we shall see._

"With them I have no magic. How should I stop these men who destroy your wood without it?"

_Like any normal man. Use your wits. My giant, poor dumb thing that it was, took up the task. Are you less willing than he?_

Schneider glared at Glyncara. His eyes narrowed and he waved a hand in acceptance. "All right. Fine. I accept."

_Good._ The lady of the forest smiled, she reached out and touched Yoko in the center of her chest. _There is yet one more thing. Should you decided to not honor the agreement and leave this forest to its fate. You will go alone. For this girl is cursed with my geas. If she steps foot outside the wood without the bargain being fulfilled, she will herself turn into a tree. She will forever be a part of this wood, unless the loggers cut her down._

Schneider cursed. He lunged at Glyncara, hands out to strangle her, but she dispersed in smoke when he reached her. Yoko stood staring at the spot she had been. The whirlwind of leaves just stopped. The wind died and the mass of them settled to the ground in great clumps around the clearing.

She put her hands to her chest, trying to feel for the sense of the curse. What did a curse feel like? She had never had one on her person to know. Schneider turned around to stare at her with anger in his eyes. She stared back with dismay in her own.

"Well," she said in a small, shaky voice. "I suppose this gives us a purpose. We were rather without one before."

"That bitch."

"I understand her. Protecting what is hers. No one should destroy this old forest."

"To hell with this forest." He snarled. Then cried it out louder so that it echoed off the trees.

"Do you believe her -- about the wards?"

"I don't know. I have damned little choice in the matter. God, I hate being a puppet."

"You're not." She reminded him softly. "You could walk away right now with no repercussions. I'm the one she cursed. Do you think trees are aware?"

"You'll never find out." He snapped, glaring at her. "Do you think I would abandon you? Is that what you think of me? Is it?!!"

"No." Tiny little voice in the face of his ire.

He threw out his arms and stalked past her, kicking at piles of leaves as he left the circle of clearing. Then he stopped and screamed out into the forest.

"At the very least you could tell me where the damned loggers are, you underhanded shrew."

The wind whispered past him, stirring his hair. _To the north._ It seemed to say and then was gone.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath16.htm



	16. Chapter Sixteen

aftermath16

**Sixteen**

Gara had intruded into the walled recesses of Meta-Rikan before without proper invite. Over the walls outside the town with none the wiser. Under the bridge and up the wall with all the dexterity of a spider and he was within the boundaries of the castle itself. One day, he thought, he would teach them a thing or two about security. But, on occasion their lack of it was useful.

Something was most definitely up. He had seen legions marching northward towards Judas on his way in. Though there was little sign of a foreign presence within the boundaries of the city itself. If these pirate kings had brought men with them, they were well cloistered behind the doors of the palace. He walked along the darkened pathways of the cathedral garden, a cloak wrapped about his person, his great blade shifted down to his hip to obscure its presence. He might have been anyone on their way for late night confession. None of the few folk he encountered gave him a second glance.

Into the dormitory and down the hall. He counted the doors until he reached the one he remembered as Yoko's. He pushed down the reflexive urge to pick the lock, if she even locked it, and slip in secretly. He respected her privacy enough to rap and give her notice of his visit. No answer. She was asleep then. He rapped again, louder and listened for sound of movement. For the soft breath of a sleeper. And heard nothing. Not even the crackle of a low burning fire in this chill autumn night. He tried the handle then. It moved freely under his fingers. The door swung inwards. A cold, dark room. His eyes, already adjusted to the darkness, took in a rumpled bed, a fire that had not seen flame in many days. Clothes on the floor as if she had stopped caring about the monotonous task of washing or putting them away. Or, as if someone had been through her things.

He stood in the middle of it, with a certain dread pounding behind his eyes. Something was wrong. He had known. Somehow, he had known and he could be begin to explain to himself how.

He left her room and silently drifted down the hall to the rooms of her father. With Geo Note he gave no regard to privacy, turned the knob (did these people never lock their doors?) and slipping into the darkened rooms. There was a fire burning here. Albeit a low, much neglected one that had turned into little more than glowing embers in the blackened hearth. The smell of wine was strong. There was a empty bottle on the floor that he narrowly missed kicking. The rooms, both outer and inner were also neglected. Most unlike the Great Priest to live in such squalor. Most unlike the Great Priest to fall into his bed clothed and stinking of strong drink. Gara had not known Geo Note partook of spirits at all, being a prudish man of the cloth.

Roughly he shook the priest's shoulder, crouched next to the bed, elbows resting on knees. Geo Note snorted and grumbled in his sleep.

"Wake up, man." Gara whispered harshly and jabbed him again.

"Wh -- what?" Geo Note sputtered, waved his hands at the sudden shock of rude awakening. He stared wide eyed and blindly into the darkness. "Yoko? Yoko?"

"That's a good question. Where is Yoko?"

It took a good moment for the priest to orient on the man squatting next to his bed. He recoiled, when his eyes finally focused on Gara, and scrambled awkwardly up to a sitting position, his back to the headboard.

"By Eno Marta -- what time is it?"

"Night time." Gara supplied.

"I --I thought she had come home. I dreamed terrible things had happened to her. Because of him. Oh, Goddess watch over her."

Gara rose, leaned hands on the side of the bed and peered into Geo Note's face. "What's happened to her, Priest? Where is she, if not home?"

"Run away. From me. From marriage. With him. They're condemning her for it. Larz has sent men to chase her down. It's _His_ -fault."

"Who's He. What marriage? What in hell has been going on?"

"You weren't supposed to know. The king commanded it. The Prophet advised it." Geo Note lowered his face into his hands and sobbed. "But now its too late. He'll be the death of her."

"Damnit man, who and why? And I was not supposed to know what?"

Geo Note reached out and grabbed the edge of his cloak, desperation in his eyes. "Schneider. Schneider is who. From the grave. And she's run off with him and they'll both be killed."

Gara stepped back, breaking the Great Priest's hold on him, his breath caught in his chest. The babblings of a drunk old man who'd lost track of his daughter, his head told him. Then memory recalled several occasions where the Dark Mage in question had defied the boundaries of death. Schneider had a habit of coming back from the dead. Or hell had a habit of kicking him out. But of course Geo Note's words did not make sense. If Schneider was back, his being on the run with Yoko was about as likely as him declaring his faith to the High God. Schneider did not _RUN_ -from things. Things ran from him.

"You're drunk, old man. No men of Larz would chase Dark Schneider down. Much less kill him. Clear your head."

"No. No. It's true. The wards. The Prophet placed wards on him while he was senseless. He is helpless. They would have burned him on the witchfires, but the Prophet declared he would save his soul. I don't believe that any longer. Yoko didn't. She helped him escape and now the both of them are hunted. The Prophet is mad to have him back. I can not understand it. He was always such a reasonable man before this."

Gara took a breath. Schneider back from the grave. With wards preventing him from magic. With the forces of the church and the king hunting him down. With Yoko in tow. It was all a bit much. But then, with Schneider it usually was.

"You can't just burn a man for being a witch. Drive them out of town, destroy their shops, yes, but send men out after them?"

"He killed men. Innocent men outside the Temple. The king has charged him with murder and the Prophet has called him a spawn of Satan."

"Yeah, what else is new? Both are probably true to one extent or another."

"The Prophet --- the Prophet is obsessed with him, though the king won't see it. I do. Too late."

Geo Note reached for him imploringly. "Gara, you've got to find Yoko. Protect her. From them. From _HIM. _ He'll only hurt her. You know he'll only hurt her."

Gara didn't answer. He melted back into the shadows, leaving the priest to his drunken lamentations. There were other sources of information in Meta-Rikan. He believed the priest. Geo Note, even drunk, was not a man to spin fables. Schneider was alive. Alive. He refused to think of the implications of that. For now, he merely needed to know the details.

The outer chambers of the rooms in the highest level of the Temple were darkened. The glass doors of the windows that looked out upon the city, slightly ajar, allowing the breeze to billow the drapery slightly. The stern stone angles outside were stolid reminders of those powers that looked down on man from higher realms. Gara had used them as anchors for his lines.

There were chests in the room, with tops open, half packed or unpacked, the Prophet in the process of going or coming. Gara slipped past them, to the half ajar door to the inner room. Fire burned in that room, and candles, bright enough to denote a waking body, not a sleeping one. He hesitated at the door, silent as night. And from unbidden and unseen within the room a voice said.

"Don't lurk in the shadows, Master Ninja, come in."

Gara drew breath, startled. Astonished that the man could know of his presence. He pushed the door open and stepped into the bed chamber of the Prophet, regardless. Angelo stared at him, seating at a small writing desk, his hand poised over a parchment he was scripting. As ever, his face was devoid of anything but serene good will. But the face of altruism, no matter how well crafted, did not fool Gara into believing that this was not a man who valued power first and foremost.

"I've heard a rumor, Your Holiness, that disturbs me."

"Indeed it must, for you to violate the sanctity of my rooms unbidden. Have you reverted to your old ways, Master Ninja?" The quill was laid carefully down. The Prophet folded his hands before him, lifting one curious brow.

"I have heard that Dark Schneider is back among the living and that you have bound his magic and declared his life forfeit. Dare I believe such wild tales? Though the former is not unprecedented the latter suggests a great deal of presumption."

"Presumption, Master Ninja? And had he come back -- as an agent of the Dark Power that rules hell and killed innocent men in hell's name -- then should he be allowed to run rampart over all the good and faithful people of the lands?"

"What about the not so faithful? You seem to continuously forget about them."

"Yes, well, they ask for their own fates."

"I'm told you wished to keep this information from me. Why, I would even assume you went to great lengths -- considering the priests on the road who spoke lies to prevent my coming."

"If priests spoke lies, then they are no true servants of the god. Who would ever think to block your passage anywhere, Master Ninja. Could it even be done?"

Gara was a expert of reading men's intentions, and yet with the Prophet he felt as if he stared a painting by the hand of a master who depicted exactly what he wished a person to perceive of his work. It had always been so with Angelo. And yet, there was some scent of peril just beneath the eyes. Some sense that Angelo merely waited for the chance to lunge. It was an intangible notion that made Gara nervous and few things made the Ninja Master uncertain. He had his answers. The Prophet had not said in so many words, but he had said all the same that Schneider was indeed back and that church and king, most assuredly in that order, were on his heels.

"Did you think to keep it from us forever?"

"No." Angelo said. "Just long enough. And I do thank you for coming, it will make my case so much more justified."

"What?"

The Prophet smiled, then jerked, clutching at his side. Blood seeped from between his fingers. He screamed, as if in great pain and half stumbled from his chair. Gara stared, shocked, until he heard running feet from the outer room. Then it occurred to him that he was being set up. He snarled, briefly considering taking the murasume from its sheath and truly bloodying it on the deceitful bastard. But, damned little good would come of that -- the assassination of the Prophet. He whirled and made for the window even as two priests came running at the Prophet's scream. They saw him and cried out in alarm, calling for guards. The Prophet called weakly for help from the other room. Then Gara was shimmying down the line with the agility of a spider thinking himself a fool twice over.

They brought the Prophet to the castle, where the king's own physician might care for his wound. It was the puncture of a sword, just above the kidneys, thank the one God that it had not been lower or higher or the Prophet might have suffered a long painful death. The town was in a uproar, squadrons combing it for the foul assassin that had attempted the Prophet's life. There was no sign.

"Waste not your time." Angelo lifted a weak hand and placed it over the King's who sat near his bed, anger on his pale face. "You shall never find one such as he."

"Gara. Gara!! How could he, damn him, after I gave him lands and honor. How could he betray us so?"

"It was not his doing, my lord." Angelo smiled gently. "It was the taint of Schneider that drove him back to his old murderous ways. He'll influence all of them -- the Thunder Empress -- the Ice Lord. His dark allure was always strong, but now it has the power of hell to back it. There will be war, my lord. God save us all, they will gather forces and descend upon us as they did in the past."

"I'll gather the legions. Call in troops from all the south." Larz paced, hollow eyed and determined. "This will not happen again. I have seen too much of war to allow it."

"Send not the troops after them. They are his puppets. Send them to find Schneider. He is the crux of the evil that faces us." The Prophet paused, wincing in great pain. The healer offered him an herbed tea to soothe the discomfort. He bravely waved it away.

"My Lord King, send your forces north of Judas, for that is where _HE_ -is. It is he that has spurred this attack and will spur others. Cut off the head of the snake and the body will die. So it will be with the lords of havoc."

Larz turned, a deep breath filling his chest. "I do not want war brought upon my people again, Prophet. I truly do not wish to suffer them that, when they have only begun to recover from the last. Tell me that finding Schneider will stop that from happening. Tell me that is what you see, Prophet."

"It is what I see, your majesty. What the High God shows me. Find him, majesty. Corner him, strip him of support and leave him to the church to deal with. That is how I prophesy that the horrors of war might be avoided."

Larz nodded once. "Then it will be so."

A days walk from the unfortunate encounter with the lady of the forest and Schneider and Yoko happened upon the first sign of the logging operation that so distressed Glyncara. There was a trail in the wood that was wider and more well traveled than a game trail. There were signs of wagon wheels and hooves having passed it in abundance. Schneider boldly stepped onto it and began following it northward. Not certain that such a direct approach was wise, but still somewhat preoccupied over the disturbing curse placed on her, Yoko followed without argument. Very soon they heard the laughter and conversation of men.

Three men, in the hardy, plain clothing of woodsmen, two with axes over their shoulders and one with a bag of supplies strolled down the trail. When they chanced to notice Schneider and Yoko walking towards them, the conversation stopped, which was never in her opinion a sign of good things to come. Schneider did not seem to care. He strode onwards as if strange men bearing axes in the forest were no concern for him.

"You there. How far is your camp?"

Yoko rolled her eyes at the bluntness. One might as well announce to them that they were on a mission to drive them out of the forest.

The three loggers exchanged looks. Then looked them over in turn, all three sets of eyes lingering in an uncomfortable manner on Yoko.

"Why? You lookin' for work? She'll find plenty on her back." They laughed at that, convincing themselves they were of high wit. "Nothing like her in Thraxtown."

"Thraxtown? Is that your camp?"

The loggers shifted, moving about them, obviously more interested in looking Yoko up and down than concentrating on Schneider's questions. Nervously, she moved closer to him, pressing against his arm.

"How much for a romp in the leaves with the little lady?"

Schneider lifted a brow. "She's not for sale or rent. Romp with each other if the urge is so strong."

They chortled at that, but it was not a pleasant laughter. "Bet she'd be happy to have a real man ride her 'stead of a pretty boy like him."

"Three real men."

They circled closer. Yoko clutched at Schneider's arm.

"So, let me get this straight." He asked in a silky tone. "You're not going to tell me where your camp is?"

"No, but we'll take your woman there."

Schneider smiled. The sword came out of the sheath with a smooth motion and he whirled two handed and sliced into the unprotected belly of the man on his right. Yoko yelped and crouched under the return arc. The two loggers who were not trying to hold their intestines in cried out in articulate rage and attacked. One swung his ax madly. Schneider blocked it with the blade, caught the ax head in the cross guard of the sword and kicked his opponent in the gut. Then when the man bent double. Sliced his throat.

Blood splattered Yoko. The third logger was smart enough to realize he faced a swordsman and had no sword himself. He dropped his bag and started running. Schneider did not dignify the retreat with chase. Merely hefted the sword and flung it like a spear. It lodged in the back of the escaping man. The logger sprawled flat on his face with the blade sticking up from his back.

Yoko gagged. She wiped blood from her face and glared at Schneider. She was trembling. Her stomach was queasy. Fear and reaction begin to turn into anger.

"What in hell are you doing?" she screamed at him. "Are you mad? You just -- you just killed them. How could you just kill them?"

Schneider stared at her incredulously. "Did you miss something there?" he demanded. "Should I have let them have their way with you? Did you pick up a taste for gang rape while I was gone?"

"You moron!" She climbed to her feet and stalked towards him. He took a step back warily when she raised her clenched fists. "You don't just go around slicing people open."

"Would you have felt better if I'd burned them to a crisp? I would have preferred it, believe me, but that option wasn't open. Besides, she told us to stop the loggers. This is as good a way to start as any."

"Do you see this blood on me? I don't like blood from other people's slit throats spurting on me. It was hot and it was disgusting and if you ever drop a bloody corpse at my knees again I will sooooo make you regret it." She waved a finger under his nose to emphasize her point. "And if you have to go and butcher someone -- just warn me ahead of time, would you, so I can get out of the way. And I want a knife or a sword or something, because I am tired of cowering like some helpless woman everytime something threatens us."

She planted her fists on her hips and glared up at him, waiting for a response. He stared down, a very slight smile touching his lips.

"Are you finished?" he asked finally.

She sniffed and admitted. "I think so."

"You are so beautiful when you're angry."

Goddess. She rolled her eyes, threw up her hands and stalked away to check the corpses, grisly job that it was, for a knife or dagger she could claim for her own.

"You look good with blood on you too." He added, as if that would make her okay with the feel of the sticky stuff spattered all over her. Then she recalled thinking something similar of him not too long ago and blushed. She found a six inch knife on the one with the slit throat and wiped its sheath clean of blood with leaves before sticking it in her belt.

Schneider retrieved his sword, similarly cleaned it and rummaged about in the pack of the dead man after he had dragged the three bodies from the path. There were food stuffs, extra clothing, tags for marking trees, canvas, cord and various other simple survival supplies. Everything but the tags was a goddess send.

"Don't even think about eating here." She warned, when he looked like he was going to delve into the food stuffs then and there, corpses and all. He cast her a pained look, which turned into one of resignation, then cast the pack over his shoulder and ushered her down the trail the way the loggers had come.

"Why this way? They were headed the other direction?"

"Because Glyncara said north. That way is west."

She couldn't argue with that. She had to admit not being particularly clear on the part of his conversation with the lady of the forest after the curse had been laid on her. One tended towards distraction when one learned one might turn into a tree.

So she followed him down the trail, away from the carnage, rubbing at the blood spots on her skin. She hoped they would come upon a stream soon so she might wash the stuff from her body and clothing. She mentioned that desire and he said sagely.

"Oh, we will."

It was not until later that afternoon that she realized how far they had come since the flight from Judas. She heard the rushing of the river before they came to it. The Ahrend River, which divided the South from the plain lands of the lower North. It cut through the Great Forest from the mountains of the east and traveled in an ever widening channel towards the sea. It was the longest river on the continent.

One moment they were walking through the wood, intent on the sounds of a great deal of running water and the nest, the trees just stopped. The wood ended in an abrupt and savage swath of razed land that extended for as far as the eye could easily see. Dry, drying undergrowth coiled and twisted around the stumps of a thousand trees. It was so shocking, so devastating a destruction that Yoko almost walked out of the wood to better see the wreckage. Schneider caught her arm and yanked her back before she could step foot from beneath the shadow of the foliage.

"Remember the curse." He hissed at her. She blanched and hugged herself.

The river Ahrend ran to their left, cutting through both forest and razed land both. It would be, she thought numbly, the perfect vehicle for transporting logs down stream to the docks and lumber yards of Ciziran and Thacon which sat on either side of the gulf that the river emptied into. How very convenient a means for the death of a forest.

"Oh Goddess." She whispered. "The Great forest went for fifty miles past the Ahrend. What have they done?"

"The march of civilization." Schneider said in disgust. "They've got to rebuild everything we destroyed during one battle or another. Look." He pointed into the expanse of devastation. In the distance, at the edge of the river sat a wood walled compound. There seemed to be activity about it. There was a road alongside the river leading to it and the forest. Many such roads, from the look of it, including the one they stood on the edge of. Roads for wagons to haul back lumber to be send down the river. It was a huge logging city, with no doubt hundreds upon hundreds of men working within and without. How were they to stop something so large?

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath17.htm



	17. Chapter Seventeen

aftermath17

**Seventeen**

Yoko stayed in the woods, well off from the trail where any passing loggers might find her. She had her knife, which she assured him she well knew the use of, the supplies they had scavenged from his kills and his stern direction to stay out of trouble. She had primly told him she was neither a child nor an idiot and not to treat her like one. He had arched a brow at her imperious lift of the nose and the rigid set of her back and drove down the urge to press her against the soft earth and tell her exactly what he did think of her. She more than likely would have had something to say about that as well, so he merely inclined his head at her, and swept her a exaggerated bow.

He walked down the trail towards Thraxtown. Yoko had complained that if he were going to inconspicuously take a look about a rough and tumble logger town, then he might not want to stand out like a lord in a pig pen. He had stared at her in blank incomprehension. How could he help but stand out? It was not everyday that some rat infested lumber camp was graced by the presence of so great a wizard, well so usually great a wizard, if one wanted to get technical. Subterfuge had never been a practice of his. He thrived on attention. He could not imagine NOT making an entrance.

"But then they'll be wary of you, or scared or contemptuous ---" She had argued.

"Contemptuous? What do you mean contemptuous?"

She had taken a breath for patience, which annoyed him, as if he inspired a shortness of it. "Like those poor butchered men --"

"Rapists."

"Whatever -- on the trail back there. Of course they didn't think they were better than you --"

"I should hardly think so."

"--But they were able to recognize the class difference and that usually puts people off. You can't stroll into town and let everybody know how great and wonderful you are and not expect them to distance themselves. You won't find out anything useful that way."

"What do you suggest?" He had asked, warily.

"Well for one -- that hair."

Both brows went up. "What, prey tell, is wrong with my hair?"

"Nothing. I love your hair. But -- its sort of not everyday guy hair. Its sort of -- decadent." She thought about that word for a moment, decided she liked it and went on. "You attract attention."

He stared at her levelly. He could accept that explanation. One was aware of one's attributes. He waited for her to justify the wasted time in bringing it up.

"We've got to do something about your hair and you're not really dressed like a man that belongs in a logging town ---"

Hence, after argument and distaste on his part, he approached the thick lumber barricade around Thraxtown wearing a flannel shirt from the pilfered pack of a logger, his hair in a braid down his back and an abhorrent knit hat on his head. He despised the hat. He had argued vehemently with Yoko about the nasty thing. She had yanked his hair, (she had been braiding it at the time) and told him in no uncertain terms that it was an important part of the disguise.

The gates were open. A wide wagon pulled by two large and bored looking mules lumbered out as Schneider was going in. The mules were in no mind to give way to a single man on foot and he had to scramble back to avoid being trod under hooves and wheel. His boots squelched in thick mud at the side of the road. He glared at wagon and mud, as if both had contrived the day long to practice this indignity upon him.

The town inside the barricade had been put up hastily. There were canvas tents and shoddily constructed wooden buildings. The streets were mud, churned ankle deep by heavy wagons and the passage of hundreds of feet. A rustic, crude town of lumber men and their followers. The crippled that hawked for charity at the road side, the camp whores, who were as used and unappealing a lot as Schneider had ever seen. The herb women and hedge witches in tents that boasted healing salves and wards for snakes and spiders and poison ivies. Pouches that could drive away rats and cure crabs and any other sexual disease picked up from the dirty whores who serviced these men. He doubted the latter much worked. There were some things more stubborn than simple magic could deal with. The preachings of the Prophet had not reached here, to drive away the witches. These rugged men, who worked in the wilderness and suffered from it, more than welcomed the plain cures the hedge witches offered. Religion be damned when it came to chasing the wood rattlers away from where a man worked.

Schneider stopped under the awning of one such tent, drawn to the hint of magic in the many pouches the old woman hawked. A true witch, he thought. Not a powerful one, if she was reduced to following this camp, but not a woman without arcane knowledge. The withered old hag behind the plank counter eyed him gleefully, a potential customer in her domain.

"What is it today, for such a handsome, handsome boy as yourself?"

He cast his eyes over her charms and pouches, wondering if she could even imagine how old he was.

"None of your wares today, grandmother. Just a bit of information."

"Information, huh? That's rarer than magic in these parts. What will you pay?"

He leaned on the counter, fixing her with his gaze. "Make it a professional courtesy. One --- practitioner of the arts to another."

She stared back, searching his face. "Do I know you?" She asked warily.

He shrugged. "Maybe."

"I seem to recall seeing you before." She shivered, not able to grasp the memory she sought. "What information, then, fellow artist?"

"How long have they been cutting at this wood? How long has this town been here?"

"Oh, for almost a year now, the lord Thrax has worked on this great forest. The town has moved three times."

"Thrax? He's lord here? He owns the lumber operation?"

"He does. The greatest lumber baron in the known world, he is and proud of it."

"Really? So one might consider him the ultimate power here?"

"Oh, most assuredly."

"Where might I find him?"

"His house is the biggest in town. You can't miss it. But he plays Pirates and Kings every night at the Busty Whore."

When he lifted an inquisitive brow at her, she cackled and gestured out the tent and to the north. "Tavern down the street."

"Thank you for the help, grandmother. Perhaps I'll send some business your way."

She sniffed at the improbability of that as he walked away.

In the middle of daylight, the logging town was conspicuously shy of men, the loggers out deforesting the Great Wood. He walked about the town, getting a feel for the lay of it. Simple really, A main street lined with wood buildings that housed general store, tavern, lumber offices, with tents in-between where pimps offered tired whores and physicians made their offices amidst the mud and squalor. A man screamed inside a tent that boasted the sign of a dentist. At the end of this street was a large, well constructed log house, with a fence about it to keep passer bys from churning the yard to mud like they had the rest of the town. There were stables to the east where work horse and mule were housed, and to the north, beyond the lumber baron's house were a sea of tents that belonged to the loggers themselves. Hundreds and hundreds of them. A small army of men to discourage from razing Glyncara's wood. If Glyncara had lived up to her claim and removed the wards, it would have been simple. A Venom spell, multiplied, would have melted the whole expanse of tents and loggers within them. But far be it from a woman, and being of unnatural origin only made it worse, to ever take the simple route. No, make as much of a job of it as possible. Put him to as much trouble as one possibly could. Make him wear the damned cap.

He seethed over the cap for a few streets, glaring at passerby, who dared to stare at his passage. Came to the western side of the town where the barricade drove right into the shores of the river and where a lumber yard had been set up. A fair number of men worked at positioning the cut trees into broad groups of flotsam in the water, before they were set loose to drift downriver.

He tired of touring the dreary little town and made his way to the tavern the hedge witch had promised Thrax to attend. There were only a few customers, the men still hard at work, and the lone barmaid pounced on him with single minded, rabid attention. If she had been even vaguely pretty he would have passed time entertaining himself by flirting with her. As things were, he nursed watered down, poor quality ale and attempted to drive the wench away with an imperious disregard only kings and very powerful wizards could achieve, but it was lost on her. One suspected the cap and the logger's shirt worked against a really good air of regal contempt. She kept reminding him that she usually would go in the back for a romp for a copper coin, but since he was so clean, she would consider doing it for less. He would glare at her frostily until she went away, only to be back in short order to bother him with something else. There had been a time when only beautiful women had thrown themselves at his feet.

Eventually, when the shadows grew long outside, the loggers began drifting into the tavern, tired and sweaty from a long day's work. With them came a tremendous buzz of raucous laughter and coarse conversation. He sat a small round table in a back corner of the tavern, and even though the place became full to overflowing with patrons, no one intruded upon his little island of privacy, warned by the dangerous look in his eyes. They watched him, though. A stranger in the midst of a crew that knew and worked together. Eventually a trio of truly untalented musicians struck up a tune. The loggers, well into their cups, stomped along with the melody, many of the men taking up their work mates as dancing partners and tromping with an abominable lack of grace about the floor. The whole of the tavern thought it uproariously funning when one ungainly couple crashed into a table, spilling ale over themselves and its occupants. Schneider watched the whole thing with growing scorn and thought no one in their right mind would terribly mind if he did send the whole town up in flames.

Eventually the lumber baron Thrax made his appearance. He arrived with several burly men guarding him,( every powerful man needed bodyguards to show the extent of his power) and a passingly pretty, if not plump young woman on his arm. Thrax himself had logger written all over him. Granted, he was a logger who had removed himself from the woods, attempted to clothe himself in somewhat fashionable garb and wear his hair in the style of a gentleman, but as the saying went -- you could take the man out of the woods . . . .

Thrax stomped into the tavern, swelling visibly as every eye in the room fixed on him. A man who thrived on notability. Who had worked hard to achieve it, even in the midst of this dismal, rustic little town. A man who thought he was someone of consequence.

He and his entourage moved through the crowd to a table that cleared quickly for him. Chairs were pushed forward to accommodate he and his, the woman sidling up close to him, her hands sliding under the table to no doubt entertain him there. A game board was brought out along with a bottle of wine that no doubt never touched lips other than his. Everyone else got common ale. He sat the game pieces on the board and called for comers. A thick bellied logger took the seat opposite him and they began a game of Pirates and Kings. Schneider remembered another name for the game, but like everything else of old, it had disappeared into the ages. Same game basically, same goal, similar rules. Just a difference in the labeling of characters.

Thrax beat the first comer in short order and a new challenger approached. After a while the interest in the game wavered and other than a core group of loggers either unusually intelligent for their class, or particularly willing to brown nose their lord, men turned back to their conversations, their drinks and their clumsy attempts at dance.

Another opponent beat and Schneider rose and gradually eased his way through the crowd into the circle of observers. Thrax fancied himself a master of the game. That was clear from the superior smile on his lips as he watched his opponent make inevitably bad moves. His King always took the Pirate.

"Who's next? Who's next to give me a run for my money?" he called after vanquishing the latest foe.

Schneider stepped forward. "Are there wagers involved?"

Thrax looked him up and down, frowned. "A day's pay either gained or lost, if you've confidence enough to bet. But I don't recognize you as a man on my payroll."

"No." Schneider agreed and slipped into the chair. "What shall we bet then?"

"Are you looking for work?"

Schneider shrugged. "The right work."

Thrax laughed. The men around him did. "Lumber's the only work here abouts."

"Then I suppose that will have to do. A day's pay without the work, then when I win."

"When you win?" Thrax guffawed, genuinely amused. "All right and ten days work without pay, if you don't. Since you have so much confidence in yourself."

"I'm the Pirate, then?"

"I'm always the King."

The game began. A knight moved here and took a picaroon. A privateer took a holy priest. The royal advisor cornered the Pirate's Lady and a simple buccaneer crept up from the side and took the King when Thrax's attention to focused on his siege of the Lady and the Pirate had never moved from his secure vantage at the rear.

There was silence. Thrax stared at the board, as though searching for some sign that Schneider had cheated.

"Gawdess," Thrax's lady exclaimed, breaking the uncertain silence. "He took you in seven moves and only lost one of his men to boot."

Thrax turned a seething glare her way, then stanched it, not wanting to seem the sore looser. He could not quite force a smile when he turned back to Schneider.

"Well, you've got a days pay and no work to show for it. Will you be wanting real work after that?"

"I don't know. I suppose that depends on whether we play another game."

Thrax's frown deepened. A muscle twitched in his jaw. He seemed torn between taking this as a terrible insult or letting it go. Finally a slight grin touched his lips and he called for another bottle of wine.

"Fair enough, stranger. The next game I'll pay more heed too. A man let's his guard down playing with simpletons."

No one seemed particularly offended by that claim. The barmaid poured Schneider a glass of Thrax's private wine. It was of poor vintage and barely better than the ale.

"What's your name, stranger?" Thrax asked.

"Darshe." He answered.

"Logger by trade?"

"Many trades."

"Where did you learn the ways of Pirates and Kings?"

"Oh, here and there. I've been around."

"Well then," Thrax swallowed the remainder of his wine and slammed the cup down with gusto. "Another game, then."

The snow was beginning to fill the passes through the Great Northern Range. The tracks of the monster led over the ridge and down into the valleys on the southern side of the mountains. It had not long passed that way, for barely a day's worth of snow obscured the trail. Any normal riders would have found passage after it troublesome, what with snow past their horses noses filling the narrow passages through the mountains. But, Kall-Su was not hailed as the Ice Lord for merely the domain he ruled. Snow was blasted from their paths, or walls of ice raised to dam the thunderous tumble of avalanche. They crossed from one side of the range to the other and descended to the snowbound forests of evergreen that covered the slopes.

The thing they followed was huge. The way it passed was littered with split trees and gouged earth. Sometimes it grazed on greenery. They could tell by the stripped growth from high up on the trees. If preferred meat, but was slow in catching the antelope that populated the forests. Human prey was slower and easier to take. They had passed one village on the northern slopes of the Great Northern Range that the thing had passed through. If there were survivors they had fled deep into the forests. Kall and left two men there to see if any returned, and to burn what was left of the remains, which was not much. No reason to let other, smaller scavengers ravage the villagers, who had been oathbound to him.

If it and others of its kind, (they had no true name for it yet) had not learned the ease of hunting human prey, they might have coexisted with it. He would have been content to let it roam the high passes unmolested. He had no particular love for the hunt. He always, deep down, sympathized with the prey, though he hid the weakness vehemently from outside eyes.

They followed the winding trail down the side of the mountain, plowed through snow deep into the evening until darkness made Kall-Su summon a witch light to reveal their path. He despaired stopping when the trail was so fresh. Recent sap oozed from the broken trunks of pines.

There was a great rustling of limbs before them. A guttural sound interspersed with a crunching, grinding of bone or teeth. Kiro drew his sword. His men did. The war horses pricked their ears in expectation, great hooves stomping in the snow. They rode forward and in a great clearing a beast crouched. Blood spattered the snow around it and in it's great jaws, held by two long clawed forearms was the carcass of one of the giant mountain bears. The bear was small in the monster's grip. Its shoulders were the height of four men end to end, tapering down to a ridged spine that ended at a long, thick tail that thrashed in the snow like a cat's. There was nothing feline about it. Its back legs were long and jointed like a wolfs, save that the feet were long and broad and wickedly clawed, four claws to the front and one prehensile one projecting from the rear for the tearing of prey. Its snout was long and filled with bristling teeth and two great horns protruded from the bones above its small black eyes. A most fearsome beast, and a most irritated one at the intrusion upon its feeding. It cried out, a rumbling screech that echoed up the slope. The knights did, brandishing their spears and swords, eager to be at the thing, eager to engage in the kill as much as they had been the hunt.

The beast dropped the bear and whirled, lashing out with its tail. A horse went off its feet, screaming. The man on its back tumbled and came up with sword still in hand. A spear stuck in the thing's hide. It seemed not to notice. It lunged at men and horses, testing their strength and their speed. Kall kept his horse in check, wondering as always at the sheer insensibility of men to engage in hopeless battles. He had seen so many go to their deaths in battles that seemed impossible to win. And yet they went. Out of honor. Out of misplaced loyalty. Out of courage that held more a grip on them than common sense.

Well, perhaps these men today, did not go blindly into a fray that they knew they had no hope of winning. They were well aware that their lord rode among them. They were well aware of his capabilities. Kiro got knocked from his horse by the sweep on one clawed arm, armor was torn and blood drawn. Kall had watched enough.

He mouthed the words to a spell. Felt his horse dance nervously under him, the animal well aware of when the arcane was in the air. He summoned a mid-level ice spirit to do his bidding. Set it to a specific spell task and sent it on its way. The ground under the beast's feet began to crystallize. Ice began to creep up the monster's legs, entrapping them in a white, faceted prison. It screamed its rage; its fear as the ice reached it's upper body. The knights stood back, well away from the edges of the spell. Kall thought he had it. With a great, frenzied cry the thing convulsed, tensing all its mighty muscles and ice cracked. It shattered, spraying outwards and pelting his knights. The thing launched upwards, desperate to escape the icy fingers the ground sent up at it. Twenty feet it bounded up, and came crashing down in an ungainly fashion some four feet from Kall's suddenly terrified horse. The war horse screamed and scrambled to distance itself from the monster. The thing pounced ready to tear to pieces the closest human attacker. Kall cried out the quickest spell he could think of and ice spears radiated out from his outstretched hand and pierced the monster's neck, shoulders and lower jaw. It staggered, frothing blood, in deathly pain and mad now.

"Kuth Sath Xan, do my bidding now by the covenant made with blood and ice." He cried out the incantation of a nasty, nasty little offensive spell, wanting the thing dead now. It made a step towards him, then arched backwards, mouth open in soundless shock. Its internal origins would be freezing right about now. The blood stopping in its veins. The flesh turning cold and rigid as its body turned to ice from the inner core outwards. It took maybe eight second from the time the spell began for the monster to topple over, frozen in position and very, very dead.

He dismounted. Took a moment to calm the frightened horse; the horse meant a great deal to him, then handed the reins to one of his men and walked though the trampled, blood spattered snow to see how badly Kiro was hurt. A rent in leather armor and thick padding that seeped blood from a gash in the ribs below. A bruise to the side of his captain's face that was red and blistered with blood. Kall did not ask the obvious thought that surfaced in his mind, which was, If I was here, foolish man, why go to all the trouble to attack the thing with swords and spears? He knew the answer, of course. Honor and all that.

He placed fingers over the wound and whispered a healing spell. Surprisingly enough, to work a simple healing took more concentration than a powerful and destructive ice spell. One had to be careful when one was working to restore a thing rather than destroy it. A great healer, which he was not, invested a lifetime's worth of study into his trade.

Another of his men had a dislocated shoulder, which was set back into place by mundane means. They had lost a horse. His men discussed the taking of trophy horns, if not head. Kall left them to that grisly talk, having no interest in such a prize. More concerned about two injured men and one horse short and snow beginning to fall from the sky. He might convince it to hold back a day more, but it would only make the storm harsher by far when eventually it did let loose. Better not to tamper with the weather during the winter. It was fickle enough without his help.

There was a trading outpost further down the mountain, he thought. Not far if the map he visualized in his head were anything close to the truth of their position. They might get another mount there and a day or two's rest for his wounded. His men would revel in the tales of the killing of the beast. The mountain men who always frequented such outposts would likely tromp up the mountain to see the frozen corpse. Yet one more fable to grace the highlands.

Yes, down the mountain to the trading post. Further south than he had been in almost year.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath18.htm



	18. Chapter Eighteen

aftermath18

**Eighteen**

Gara was out of the city before the guard had the chance to be summoned and set in motion to stop him. Not that they could have. But they could have inconvenienced him. Slowed him enough so that someone who could have stopped him, like Larz for instance, might have time to reach him. The entire time he slid in and out of the shadows, and hurried through the lands outside the city walls where his horse was hidden, he cursed himself for not finishing the job the Prophet had started. Damn the man anyway, hiding secret arcane talents under that facade of holiness. Nasty little trick, to create sword wounds in one's own body out of thin air. Not one Gara ever hoped to learn.

Schneider was alive. That thought kept ringing through his head. And behind that - - _Arshes. Arshes. She'll run back to him. Better that he were still in the ground. _ Then he shook that notion back, chiding himself for shallowness and lack of honor. To wish a friend and a comrade dead for the sake of a woman was not the act of a true man. Especially when he had never had the woman in question to begin with. Better that he thank the fates that she might be happy again.

He avoided the roads, traveling well away from where prying eyes might spot a lone traveler. Not that they wouldn't know where he was heading . Not that they hadn't means, wizardly ones to send word ahead and let the garrisons along the road know that an assassin was on his way past.

He pushed the horse past its endurance and had to rest in the wee hours of the morning, hiding like a bandit in a copse of trees twenty miles out of Meta-Rikan. His first impulse was to wait the day out, secure and hidden. Sheltering night would hide his passage. It was the way of the ninja. But he feared forces from Meta-Rikan would overtake him in their zeal to stop him and he would then have to work his way through their lines. So he took to the saddle again after only a few hours rest and carefully weeded his way through the most underdeveloped lands, skirting from wood to wood. There were too many planted fields this close to the city for total anonymity. Too many small homesteads to go far without passing a road or a distant farm.

But he was good at what he did. And careful as only age and experience might make a man careful. He passed the day at a slow pace, conserving the horse's strength so that it might travel into the night. He had water and jerky to break his fast and allowed the horse an hour's grazing at the side of a stream. He dozed fitfully, trusting the animal to alert him should anything venture near. That little sleep and he was back in the saddle. He had operated on less.

Two miles to the west was the place the priests had stopped him on the road, warning him away from Meta-Rikan. He could have ridden east from there and encountered the foothills of the Eastern Range, but chose instead to hold his course. It proved to be a wise decision, for a day later he spied a small troop of riders making haste south along the trade road. He watched them from the hills until he was certain he recognized armor and riders.

He broke his cover then, riding down to intercept them on the road. Six armored men and a two of his ninja, led by an armed and frowning Arshes Nei. Her amber glare was enough to scald a man where he stood. She jabbed a finger at him and demanded.

"So you send cryptic messages now to draw me out? Have you good reason to cause me worry?"

He blinked at her in surprise. "You were worried about me?"

Her expression never wavered from stern disapproval. "That is neither here nor there. What was the meaning of the babbling your men came back with? Is there amiss in Meta-Rikan?"

"Well -- you might say that." He didn't know how else to say it, with her staring at him expectantly, with the men shifting behind her on a road touched with evening's purpling light. His fingers tightened on the reins so hard the leather bit into his palm. "He's alive, Arshes. Again."

She stared at him, not understanding -- or refusing to. Gara shook his head, his mouth gone dry, his heart hammering in his chest as if a great battle faced him. He regarded this woman higher than any other. He loved this woman. And here he sat facing her, with an explanation on his lips that would forever keep her from him.

"He's alive." He repeated it.

Her lips moved. She sat as a statue in her saddle. A statue of living flesh with a core so hot he was warmed by the mere closeness. "What do you say, Gara?" she whispered.

"Schneider came back. It shouldn't surprise us. He's done it before."

"When? Where is he?"

"I don't know. I know damned little, save what drunken babble Geo Note told me. The Prophet it seems is a cat of a different breed than we thought. He's clipped Schneider's wings -- somehow and wants a meal. The church is condemning him -- no news there -- and Yoko and he have fled the city. I do believe Larz has forces out after him."

"Did you talk with Larz? Did you demand he cease this -- pursuit?"

"Ah -- no. The Prophet circumvented that. I wouldn't advise talking sense to any of that lot just yet."

"How did you know?" Arshes shifted minutely, betraying emotion behind the facade of Thunder Empress. "What made you go to Meta-Rikan?"

"I don't know. A feeling. A gut instinct. More to do with Yoko than Schneider. He was the last thing on my mind."

"They sought to keep us from the city? From finding out?"

"It seems that way, lady."

"Then they shall pay." She hissed. "If they've harmed him in any way, I shall see them all burn."

"Arshes." Gara held out a hand. "Think a moment. We don't know the details here. We don't want to go up against Larz and his clerics and the devil knows what powers the Prophet has hidden away, without thinking it through first. We don't have the forces. Your own are scattered. Mine are mixed so thoroughly with men from Meta-Rikan that I can't muster troops without infringing on the loyalty of half my men. We need to figure out where Schneider and Yoko are. Larz was sending troops north, up the river towards Judas. Good bet there's a reason for that."

"Kall-Su has forces to spare." Arshes said. "He never let his army disperse."

"Fine. Then contact him. Tell him the situation and get him out of hibernation up there in the cold north and down here. For now, we gather what forces we know are loyal to us and we avoid Larz's troops."

She nodded, impatient and not wishing an argument, wanting to move and do something. Her fingers reached out and she touched his arm. There passed between them a private look, her eyes gone liquid and her lips trembling.

"He's really alive?"

He nodded. She shuddered, then withdrew her hand. Her back straightened with determination and the Thunder Empress was back.

Yoko felt ghastly rummaging about a dead man's belongings, but there was little help for it. As she had told Schneider, if one did not wish to stand out like a sore thumb, one dressed the part. Which in her case was disguising the fact that she was a woman. Not that she had a particular plan. She was forbidden from the logging town by verdict of Glyncara's curse. So the only option she had, after hours of boredom drove her to the decision that she had to do something, was to follow the trail to whatever logging operation it led to and see what there was to see.

She bound her breasts and donned a bloody coat pilfered off the body of a corpse. Shifting about stiffening limbs was truly an unpleasant task. She had cringed and swallowed back nausea the whole time. She knotted her hair in a bun and wrapped a bandanna about it, then pulled on a woolen cap (also taken from the dead) to cover the whole. The cap had long flaps that came down over her cheeks, covering to some degree the soft curve of feminine jaw. She thought she might have passed for a boy, if not a man grown. At least she would not be hailed as a woman from a distance and have half the loggers in the woods salivating on her heels. Why did men have to be so uncooperative and bothersome? If the world were run by women it would be such a nicer place to live.

With that surly historic thought in her head, she followed the trail west for some while before coming to an area that was newly being stripped of trees. Why they chose this area instead of any other along the trail to work their destruction, she did not know. One supposed a type of tree more vital to their profits grew here and not there. She cared not. She skirted about the operation, watching twenty or more men work in teams with great saws longer than her body. Other's had shimmied up to the heights of trees and severed limbs from the torso. Other men collected the droppings and tossed what they had no use for in a great pile of discarded wood, and loaded what they did want onto a series of waiting mule carts. Some of the carts were huge things, with wheels almost as tall as she, and beds broad enough to sleep a dozen people comfortably. A picket line of mules and heavy horse rested idly, munching contentedly at grain sacks about their noses, while the carts were loaded with lumber.

They had cleared in this site alone, perhaps twenty acres of land. She wondered how long they had been at it. With the gusto these men displayed in their work, not long, she guessed. She despaired ever being able to stop them. She hated them, and not alone for Glyncara's sake, but for the trampled nests she saw littering the ground and the silence of the wood all around the campsite, as if all the animals had fled the destruction of their home.

A man cried out warning in the distance and all the others hesitated in their work, watching as a towering forest giant fell with a thud and a billowing of debris. There were a few whistles and hoots at the achievement, then the men returned to their work. The mules and horses rolled their eyes nervously at the commotion in camp, but soon went back to their chewing. She watched them thoughtfully. There were eighteen draft animals here, waiting to haul the wagons back. Though it would surely be no mortal blow, it would be inconvenient if they were to break the picket and run away. She thought she might, if she worked at it, be able to place an urgency in their simple, equine minds, to flee to the south. It would keep them from turning up back at the logger town and being brought back into service.

It was something she could do to help, at any rate. She had to do something other than sit passively in the woods waiting for Rushie to fix matters. It was her continued existence as a human being in question, after all.

She slipped through the trees to the picket line and no one noticed her, or if they did questioned her presence. She scratched under the forelock of the first large horse in line. Its gentle eyes observed her patiently. She knew the ways of simple, animal direction. It was one of the first spells taught to those in the Holy Sword. It was a exercise in patience and concentration that when learned properly made other, more complicated spells easier. All she had to do was plant in the animal's mind a fixation on the south. A need to reaching some unknown destination that lay in that direction. A warm stable, a manger full of barley and sweet grasses. A rubdown. Anything that would drive a horse with single minded clarity to travel. It wouldn't last more than a day or so. Her compulsions were not that strong. But it would be enough to get the animals well away from here. She left the first horse with its head turned southward and its ears pricked and moved to the second. The mules were harder. Their minds more closed. They had never had the desire to please or accommodate man bred into them like horses and were less inclined to be receptive to her coaxing invasion of their small, beady brains. Twice the work with them and she was sweating and exhausted by the time she'd finished the line.

It was just a matter then of loosening the picket and drawing the line out of the halter loops. They didn't know they were free at first and she waved her hands in their faces, hissing Shoo Shoo at them to get them moving. Once the first horse realized it was free to pursue the southerly urge it bolted across the edge of the clearing, with the others following on its tail.

The loggers did look up then, and dropped their tools to rush across the camp in efforts to cut off the animals. Yoko darted into the woods, running herself, wanting well clear of the area when the band of disgruntled men gathered together to place blame. She laughed as she slipped between trees, pleased with her own hidden stealth. Gara would have been proud. She surprised herself sometimes.

She was so busy congratulating herself that she forgot to watch her step. Her foot twisted in a gully and she crashed down, grazing her leg on the jagged end of a broken limb that jutted up from the forest floor. She cried out and aborted the sound with an effort, biting her lip and squeezing her eyes tightly shut with the pain. She lay twisted, afraid to move in case she felt the grating of broken bone. Afraid to look for the same reason. Her ankle throbbed and her leg did, above the knee on the outside of her thigh. She moved a hand down to feel her thigh and her fingers encountered wet. She forced her eyes open and shifted, which movement itself brought great pain, to see the damage. There was a rent in her pants leg, and a deep gash in her flesh that bled copiously. Tears leaked from her eyes, as much from frustration as pain.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. To cripple herself hours walk from the forest edge where Rushie would expect to find her. What would he do when she wasn't there? Something equally stupid. No, no. His blunders generally came from the arrogant assurance that he was better than the rest of the world's inhabitants. He never bollixed things out of sheer clumsiness. But he would be worried about her. He was likely to go off looking for her in the most likely place, the very place she had left, assuming the loggers had somehow captured her. It was what she would do.

She wiped tears out of her eyes and pulled the cap from her head, taking the bandanna under it to wrap around her leg. There were splinters of wood in the gash, but with no water to clean it, she hesitated poking about in it just yet. Enough to staunch the bleeding.

Her ankle throbbed with each movement of the leg. She prodded it gently when she'd finished bandaging the cut and thought with some relief that it was not broken. Bruised, sprained maybe, but with a little support, she might be able to put weight on it.

There was a stout branch a few feet away and she edged towards it, using it to lever herself up. Ohhh, pain. She saw stars. Blood trickled down the inside of her lip where she bit it. She took a great breath and hobbled a step forward. The cut didn't hurt so bad as the ankle now. The ankle felt twice its normal size. Clumsily she began limping along, cursing with each step, inside her head.

Time blurred and became meaningless. She traveled with unwavering determination down the path back to the edge of the forest. It was like someone had placed an urgent need in her head. It grew dark and she hadn't even the stamina or concentration to summon a witchlight. She cried off and on, without realizing it until the tears collected in her mouth. At one point she heard the trampling of boots behind her on the trail and the raised, angry voices of men. The loggers forced to return to camp and get more draft animals.

She hastened to the side of the path, fell amidst the bramble and brush and curled up in a helpless, trembling knot not five feet from the edge of the trail, praying to the goddess that they would not notice her in the darkness. They did not. They passed her by, in a hurry to reach home and report the desertion of their equine labor. She lay there for a while after, head spinning. Then collected her courage and managed to gain her feet again.

Down the path. She had no idea how far she was from her destination. Something came out at her from the darkness. An arm grabbed her about the neck and yanked her savagely off her feet and against a hard body. Her breath left her, her vision grayed. The hands shook her and thrust her back against a tree and a blade appeared before her spinning sight. It took her a moment to recognize him, what with the cap she'd made him wear and the braid she'd put his hair in. She stared up at him and her mouth formed his name silently.

His own mouth dropped open and his eyes widened. The sword dropped between them.

"What in hell are you doing out here dressed as a man and not in the place I left you? I thought you'd been taken by those damned lumberjacks."

"By the what?" she asked hazily. He stared at her closely and his brows descended in apprehension.

"What's wrong ? Why were you limping so?"

"I fell down." She said in a tiny voice. She was so tired and the strength that had sustained her all the while to get her, deserted her now that she had found Rushie. "I cut my leg and twisted my ankle. It hurts, Rushie." She moaned and slipped down the tree to the ground. He caught her and eased her down, ripping the hat from her head and tossing it aside.

"I almost struck first, thinking you were some man from the camp." He complained. He felt along her ankle and she hissed in pain.

"I can't see well. Can you summon a witchlight?"

"I don't think so. My head's fuzzy."

"Silly girl. What's this?" His hands touched the impromptu bandage. "Still bleeding. "

"I'm sorry. I tried to help. I chased their horses away. I'm so stupid."

"You're not stupid. I don't associate with stupid people. You just have abominable luck."

He slipped his arms under her legs and back and swung her up into his arms. She whimpered at the jostling and clung to his neck. "Which way was that brook?" he muttered, tromping through the woods with her. She drifted into darkness.

Came to with pain in her leg. He was a dark shadow bending beside her. There was the thin trickling sound of water. The little brook they had found not far from the edge of the wood, almost dried up, but still spouting some water. He took off her boot, his hands gentle. But the pain was inevitable. She drew sharp breath and he apologized. His fingers probed the swollen ankle, then he took his sword and cut a few swaths of cloth from his cloak and bound it. He rinsed the bloody bandanna in the brook and swabbed at the cut.

"Yoko, are you sure you can't summon a witchlight. I could clean this better if I had something to see by."

Her head was a little clearer now. She concentrated and whispered the summoning spell.

"_Illumina._" A very small, unsteady light appeared before her face. It bobbed there uncertainly, casting Rushie in a wavering light. He looked up at her, blue eyes sharp and worried.

"This is deep. You'll need to try a healing on yourself when you've rested. I can clean it now, but you'll be no good unless magic hurries the closing of the wound." He picked at the edges of her trousers, trying to get to the extremity of the cut.

"I had no idea," She murmured, meaning it from her heart. " that you were such a good nurse. You surprise me."

He looked up at her, taken off guard by the statement. "These need to come off, so I can wrap it properly."

She swallowed and nodded. She lay her head back and felt his fingers working at the laces of her trousers. He slipped them off, careful of the wound and of the ankle . She shut her eyes and shivered, her legs bare to the cool night air. The cold of the water as he touched rag to wound once more was more of a shock this time. The touch of his fingers a warm after effect in its wake. She let the witch light flicker in her fall from concentration.

"Just a little longer." He urged her, soft voiced.

He lifted her knee and wrapped her thigh with more pieces cut from his fine cloak. Then let his hand linger on the skin of her leg, above the bandage.

"Don't do that again."

"What?" she asked.

"Worry me like that."

"Oh." She sighed and let the light fade. "I hadn't meant to. Really. What did you find out?"

"Nothing of great import. I had planned to go back tomorrow, but I don't know if leaving you alone is so wise."

She opened her eyes in dismay. "No. You must. I'll be all right. I won't move an inch. I promise."

"You said as much before."

"I wasn't crippled then."

"You have a point."

His fingers traced a circle in her flesh. Her eyes traveled down to them. The coat and shirt came down far enough to cover the depth of her modesty, but her thighs were naked. Her face burned in the darkness. She was happy that the witchlight had died. She shifted her leg nervously and winced at the stab of pain.

"Don't move it." He reached for his mangled cloak and covered her with it, lay down beside her and enfolded her within his arms. He was warm and solid. She felt protected and oddly unsatisfied that he did nothing more than hold her. Then the weariness overtook her finally and she fell into slumber.

She woke up to a pair of birds chattering over her head, fighting over some tasty morsel one of them had found. She was entirely comfortable, her pains forgotten, her body neatly fitted into Rushie's, one of his arms her pillow the other resting across her hips slackly. The loose strands of hair from his braid tickled her nose. She twisted her head to look at him. The insouciant superiority was washed from his face in sleep. He seemed young and innocent off all the terrible and awesome things associated to his name. It was illusion of course, but she found she hardly cared for the big things, it was the small, inconsequential ones of a more personal nature that caused her pain. She reached out and touched his cheek, tracing the fine line of bone. Black lashes flickered. His eyes slitted open and caught her in the act of admiration. She did not blush. She was too warm and comfortable to do anything but smile. He slowly blinked sleep from his eyes, regarding her with those brilliant black ringed blue pools.

The rational part of her wanted to say good morning, but that wasn't what she felt on waking to this purely physical pleasure. What she wanted to say, she could not of a sudden, express in words. What she could think of was his gentleness with her last night. His uncontrived concern. His fingers tracing patterns on her skin. She thought, selfishly, that if it weren't for the evil chasing them, that she might like him stripped of magic, forced into a humanity that he'd used to his accommodation before.

Her fingers drifted to his jaw, touched his neck where the hair was gathered into the braid. She could feel the heat of him through cloak and clothing. His chest rose and fell at a quicker rate, his hand on her hip moved up her ribcage, up the underside of her arm where he found her hand and curled his fingers about it. He brought it to his lips, breath hot on her wrist, on her palm, brushed it with his lips, then his tongue. Yoko shuddered, enraptured by that simple act, a spasm traveling her body all the way to her bandaged ankle. The twinge of pain as she stretched her toes was nothing to the sensations she was feeling.

She said something soundlessly, some incoherent whimper, and drew their twined hands towards her and kissed his knuckles. He pulled her closer, a slight shifting of bodies and kissed her temple, her cheek, her eyelids. She made a sound in the back of her throat, the best expression she had for the pleasure she felt. She made it again when she tasted his lips. The feelings were so strong in her that she pressed hard against him. Wanting more.

"Slowly, my love. Slowly." He whispered against her mouth and set the pace with his hands and his mouth, slow, languidly. Her body relaxed and she entrusted herself to Rushie.

The sound of the brook trickling nearby washed over them and moss and leaves cushioned them as he rolled over onto his back and gently pulled her atop, where his weight would not hurt her wounds. Droplets of cool water began to make a pattering sound on the leaves. They glistened on his face. She kissed them off, having no more care for the rain than she did for the rest of the world at this moment.

"Oh, Goddess, Rushie _Please_ --" She whimpered.

He shuddered under her, clasping her hard, suddenly inside her body and trying to find his way into her soul. And her soul welcomed him, while some detached part of her rebuked her for being a fool, that he could not be trusted, that he would hurt her as soon as another pretty face caught his eye. As soon as Arshes Nei reentered his life. The rest of her ignored it, all the complications and possible betrayals and danced.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath19.htm



	19. Chapter Nineteen

aftermath19

**Nineteen**

"Good morning." He said after the fact, when the rain shower had stopped and sun dappled the mossy area about the brook. She snuggled comfortably against him, the both of them damp and overheated and she in a lazy state of euphoria and wonderment that she had not done this long before. She felt as if something that had been missing had been found again. Some deep, deep part of herself completed.

"It's long past that." She giggled. "Whiled away and here we are like slugabeds."

"Hardly a proper bed. But it sufficed. How do you feel?"

"I feel lovely." She sighed.

"I meant your leg."

"Oh. I'd forgotten it."

"Ah. That I'll take as a complement."

She looked up at him, wide eyed, innocent. "Why didn't you ever suggest this before?"

He blinked at her then half laughed. "I seem to recall a hundred -- no a thousand times I might have mentioned it, but you were too prudish to engage."

"So you found others." She said, and the mood darkened. She frowned, more a mind to recall all the others now that her head was clearer. He hesitated in answering, composing the proper answer.

"I will admit to a certain -- promiscuity. But of a whole, they meant nothing. Not like you."

"And Arshes?"

Another pause. In this situation, after this intimacy, she had him at a certain disadvantage. She pressed it, feeling justified in it.

"And Arshes." He acknowledged. "It is not the same."

"How so?"

"I don't know. Yes -- I do. I raised her as a daughter and it turned into something more. I cherish her. I want to see her happy. But, in my mind, I can't help but always remember her as that urchin I took under my fold."

"And me?" she whispered, terrified of the intensity of feeling in his tone when he spoke of Arshes Nei.

"You -- sometimes I can't explain you. Sometimes its so clear it hurts."

"I hurt you?"

"No. I do it to myself. Maybe its that part of me that is Rushie. Your Rushie. He -- me- we -- adored you. Worshipped you. You are the most pure, honest thing I've ever known. Rushie is the other part of my soul, the moral part perhaps, but without you it would have no hold over me."

She chewed at her thumb, not knowing whether she cared for that responsibility. Not knowing whether that was the answer she had sought. She thought it was an honest one, for the words had not fallen glibly from his tongue but been well thought out. Perhaps the missing place within her that had been filled, was the corner of her soul reserved for love. Maybe his words hinted at the same thing.

"Father said that you would hurt me. I always told him it wasn't so. But that was before -- before this. I think maybe you could."

"I would not."

She sighed, thinking that perhaps she knew him better than he knew himself. What had been simple jealousy before, would rip her heart asunder now. She thought she might have done herself a grave misjustice.

Yoko. I would not cause you pain." He pulled her closer, pressing her head against his shoulder.

She made a little sound and relaxed against him, having fouled the pleasant morning with her pessimistic musings. He had told her truths she had not been completely prepared to hear. He had not instigated this. He had not tried to sway her with pretty words. She wished she had never brought up his past dalliances.

"Will you return to Thraxtown today?" She toyed with the end of his braid. It was frayed and coming loose, long strands of hair hanging about his face.

He sighed. "I've a notion not to. There are better ways to pass time. But, I've been invited for lunch and a game of Pirates and Kings in the lumber baron's own house."

She sat up, feeling a dull ache in her thigh. "You were? Why didn't you say? How did you manage that?"

"I was. And you distracted me. I forgot to mention it. He was impressed by my skill at the game. Besides he owes me more gold than he had on his person last night. I could put it off." He rubbed his knuckles along her hip. "I'm loathe to leave you alone in such condition."

"I'll be fine." She shivered at the touch.

"Can you place wards about this area? Do you have the skill?"

"No."

He frowned, drawing his brows in frustration at his own inability to do so. She found her tunic, discarded and damp a few feet away. She pulled it on, the feel of cold, wet cloth making chill bumps rise. With more care she pulled her bloody trousers up over her bandaged ankle and thigh. He watched her, reclined on his cloak, making little movement to dress himself. She glanced shyly at him from under her lashes, admiring the languid, beautiful length of him. He had never possessed an ounce of modesty, which to a church raised girl, could be disconcerting. She looked away, rubbing her ankle.

"It's almost mid-day. If you've a lunch appointment, then you'd best be on your way."

"Are you trying to get rid of me?"

"No." _ Yes._ His presence jumbled her thoughts and she needed to think. "I just want this over. This curse. I don't see how they can be stopped."

Worry over that came tumbling back and she bit her lip. He rose with an exhalation of breath and knelt behind her, kneading her shoulders. Oh, that felt good. That made her want to lean back and delay him. But it was only his _presence_ working on her mind, not reason.

"Nothing is impossible." A whisper in her ear. For him maybe. When he had full control of his magic. The rest of the world had to work with unattainable goals.

Schneider was in a pleasantly good mood. The cap had been left behind. Yoko hadn't even noticed in her distraction. It had been a very good morning. It had been a wonderful morning. He could not quite recall a better one. He didn't mind the mud on the streets of Thraxtown at all. Well -- not much, at any rate. He smiled at the invitations of the camp whores and was even so extravagantly generous as to toss a copper at a legless beggar sitting in the muck at the side of the street. She had gotten over her gloom, which had to admit she had some slight cause for, and rebraided his hair with higher spirits, even going so far as to wrap her arms about his neck afterwards and murmur an affection in his ear. At which point he almost had been delayed until he rolled atop her injured leg and caused her to cry out, cutting the dalliance short.

His mind was preoccupied more with thoughts of his return to her than it was on the chore the lady of the forest had set him to, or placating Thrax in hopes of gaining knowledge of some weakness that might be used to drive the man away from here. He was almost giddy, which was an unusual state for him. Giddy with power perhaps, during certain exceptional summoning when the energy had cursed with undue force through his body, but never quite brought to the same state by the act of sex. One had to allow that after four centuries of engaging rather vigorously in the act that after a while it lost some degree of its wonder.

He stood in the street outside Thrax's house, his mind wondering, until a wagon trundled by and spattered mud on his ragged hemmed cloak. He glared indignantly after it. Someone had gone to the trouble to plant a few shrubs and flower beds along the walk and the facade of the house, a hypocrisy if ever there were one, considering how much effort Thrax was putting into the destruction of the forest.

Thrax's plump little mistress answered his knock and ushered him with a twittering little laugh and under the lash looks that were anything but shy. She left him in a room off the main hall. There was a fire burning in the hearth and the trappings of genteel civilization on the walls and in the glass fronted shelves. A garishly brocaded tapestry of a hunt with hounds chasing after a stylized deer and nobles ahorse cheerily willing its doom. There was a small book case with gold bound volumes, which surprised Schneider considerably, Thrax not giving him the impression of being a man much inclined to scholarly pursuit and books being rare. He browsed the titles and found a genealogy of southern aristocracy. A book of courtly phrase and bearing. A series of geological studies, written by a scholar some hundred years past that Schneider had actually been acquainted with. Various technical books and histories and a fair bit of fluff. Most of the spines looked as if the books had never been opened. Save for the courtly manners one and the royal lineage text. One supposed they were here for appearance. As were the majority of the things Thrax had collected. All medals of a sort to proclaim him as a man of taste and worldly airs to the rustic folk that revolved in his domain. None of them would know the difference.

"Afternoon, Darshe." Thrax appeared in the door way, in a silk house tunic and a second plump mistress at his side. The man had a taste for well rounded women. "Here for me to win my gold back, I see."

Schneider shrugged. "At your invitation. At your risk."

Thrax laughed, more willing to accept Schneider's arrogance out of the witness of a tavern full of loggers. "We shall see. Have you lunched or shall I bring out the board?"

"Lunch, please."

The women brought it in. Arranged it on a small table by the fire and left the men to consume it on their own.

"I'm surprised," Schneider said, willing of offer complements to gain the man's confidence. "To see such an impressive array of adornments in so a rustic place as this."

"Yes. One does what one can to bring civilization to the back woods. Would that I could make my home in a finer climate, but for a man to garner honest wealth he needs keep his hands in the business."

"Ah. Understandable. You've a sizable operation. All yours?"

"And my father's before me. We came from the east, but the increase in the beastmen across the mountains made it treacherous to work. I lost as many men as I sent out and there were few willing to hire on when the chances of murder at the hands of the half men was so great. Far riper pickings here and a quicker route to the lumberyards on the coast with the river so close at hand."

"How far do you intend to go? With the cutting of the wood? Its rumored to hide within its depths things of a -- magical nature. I've seen tracks myself of an unusual nature."

"Oh, those old wives tales. I pay them no heed. There's nothing in these woods but the occasional giant, or creature left over from the war. Nothing that won't flee the saws and the axes. We've years of cutting ahead of us."

"Who ceeded you the land?"

"No one. Its claimed by no one, unless you count the elves that used to inhabit it. But they killed themselves off long ago, fighting amongst each other. Judas will barter for taxes once we've gotten closer to her territories, but that's a long way down the road. Why the interest? You're not one of those soft hearted forest lovers are you? God help me if I've invited one of those into my home."

Schneider smiled. "No. Not one of those, I assure you."

They finished the meal, and after the remains were cleared, Thrax brought out the game board. The pieces he used here, in his home were finely carved jade. Very expensive. Very rare. Fit for a true lord. Thrax, of course, took the side of the King. Schneider had a tendency to prefer the Pirate himself.

"Lovely set." Schneider remarked fingering the Pirate's lady. Thrax beamed.

"I bought them from a jeweler in Meta-Rikan who had been commissioned by a lord for them. The lord had a drop in finances so I bought them. I've heard that the old king used to play a great deal."

Schneider shrugged. "Probably did. Wasn't very good at the real thing."

Thrax blinked, suddenly interested. "I'll have a place in court one day. Titles are for sale, I hear. So many great houses were depleted of heirs during the wars that a good many lands are vacant of their lords."

"You'll fit right in."

"I feel it." Thrax agreed, missing the sarcasm. "Its my destiny. With the Southern alliance growing stronger each day, to hold lands there will bring great power and profit. I heard the regent speak, perhaps a year past, after his coronation and he foretold of a great future for those willing to invest in the south."

"The regent Larz? Optimism is his forte."

"You sound as if you have visited the court at Meta-Rikan."

"Oh, I've drifted through now and again."

Thrax leaned forward, eyes gleaming, practically salivating for news of the court he so badly wished he were a part of. "Have you ever spoken to the king?"

Schneider thought about that before answering. "We might have exchanged a few thoughts. It all gets so muddled around the royals. You know how it is."

"Of course." Thrax agreed, not wanting to seem the country bumpkin. "I even attended the same services as his majesty and listened to the Prophet himself. Have you ever --"

"No! Your gambit I believe."

Thrax looked at the board, recalling the game. After some consideration he moved a piece. "Have you ever met the Princess---?"

Thrax had certainly studied his royal lineage's. He must have slept with the book under his pillow. He knew the names of the lords of the south better than Schneider did and _he'd_ fought with most of them at one time or another. It was almost dusk and though he had wanted to get away sooner, Thrax had held onto him like a dog with a favored bone. He had even offered a bed for the night and one of his mistresses to warm it. Declining that was a delicate matter with the lumber baron and his plump mistress looking on in expectation. Schneider could be tactful when he tried. He was getting better at it daily.

The thought of getting back to Yoko had gnawed at him for the last several hours of his stay and his mind had drifted so badly that Thrax had actually won a game. He was so distracted that he stepped in front of a lumbering cart and a solicitous logger had to grab his shoulder and haul him back, saving him from being trampled under hooves and wheels. He shook his head in amazement, thinking how ridiculously besotted he was behaving. One would think he'd never had a woman before. He'd seen love charms confuse a man less.

He passed the witch's tent he'd talked with the day before and heard her hawking flea repellents. He strode past her tent -- and stopped, thinking. Thrax was so single minded in his obsession to gain enough wealth to buy a title that there was little or nothing that would sway him from his race to fill the western lumber yards. Nothing but another obsession. Something he wanted even more desperately than a place in Larz' court. Something that in the heat of the moment, a man would forgo power and wealth and even dignity to get.

"Hello." He ducked under the flap of the hedge witch's tent. A lantern burned on the counter. There was citrus odor that kept the mosquito's away burning with the oil. She squinted up at him, in the process of filling a pouch with herbs.

"Oh, back are you? Is it more information you're looking for this eve?"

"Actually, I was wondering if you do love charms."

She canted her head, studying him. "And what need do you have for such, looking as you do? Besides any woman in town will take a tumble for a copper and mug of ale."

"Not for me. For a friend, who's in love with a person that won't take notice. A stubborn person. Do you do personalized charms? Not the generic ones, but the really good ones?"

"I could." She said carefully. "For a price. It's not considered good business to alter a person's thinking, which is what we're talking about when you get right down to it. They're burning witches nowadays for that kind of thing."

"Ah, but you and I both know that the most powerful love charm constructed will only last for a few weeks -- if that. The heart being the fickle thing it is."

"I might know such a thing." She said warily.

He put a four gold coins on the counter and her eyes bulged. It was probably more than she saw in a month or more. He had won it from Thrax this afternoon.

"I'll need something from your friend who desires a lover. A nail, a lock of hair. Something_of_ them."

"I know. Don't use cheap herbs. I want this powerful and as long lasting as you can make it. I'll come back tomorrow with what you need."

"I like a man who keeps his word. You told me you'd send profit my way." She beamed up at him, yellow toothed and haggish, but possessing a certain sparkle to her eyes that gave her character. He smiled back. "I like a witch who can live up to her claims. Tomorrow."

"Yoko." He swept down on her, embracing her so enthusiastically that she peered up at him warily through the shadows.

"I have an idea. How is your leg?"

"It's better. I did a healing. What idea?"

"If we can't make Thrax leave the forest, them we make him embrace it. I am so clever sometimes I impress even myself."

She stared at him blankly. "You're making no sense. Have you been drinking?"

He gave her an offended glare, then waved his arms about the glade. "Look, right now he wants wealth to impress all the noble asses in court -- so we make him want to impress the forest more. We make him want to impress the Lady of the Forest. If he falls in love with Glyncara, then he'll be desperate to please her. And that means he'll stop cutting trees."

"You have been drinking."

"I have not and I wish you'd stop saying it. Look, I brought you dinner." He tossed her a package he'd picked up from a vender by the gates. Sausage and grilled vegetables. "I need to make a very quick trip deep enough into the wood to get her attention."

"But -- " she stared at him, very obviously stymied by his impromptu genius.

"Just stay here. Take my cloak." He put it around her shoulders and her own cloak, then kissed her half open lips impulsively.

"I wish you made half as much sense to me as you did to yourself." She grumbled, when he'd pulled away.

"But you adore me anyway." He grinned at her and didn't wait for a nay or yeah on that statement before he was trotting through the shadows.

Quick, he figured, was an hour or two's journey into the forest past where they had first picked up the trail. It was probably as close as she would or could appear to the edge of the wood. He alternated between a brisk walk and a trot, being careful of his footing in the dark, having no wish to end up in a predicament similar to Yoko's. That would be hellishly embarrassing. When he was tired of walking and impatience had started to gnaw at him, he yelled her name.

"Glyncara! Show yourself." Every five or ten minutes as he walked he would call out. The animals would quiet themselves for a while, then return to their nighttime serenade.

"If you value this wood, appear forest spirit." He put as much command in it as he would if he were summoning a fire elemental to do his bidding.

Something brushed against his neck. He started, turning and nothing was there.

"Glyncara." He warned. "I'm too tired of tromping through your damned forest for games. If you hear, then come out."

The misty coolness touched him again, a caress along the lower back that seemed to bypass his layers of shirts and brush his skin.

_What do you want?_ The voice drifted around him, a fog seeped from the ground.

"I need something from you."

_The men are still in my Forest. You have not completed your task._.

"Nor will I, if you don't appear before me in solid form. I'm not in the mood for the cryptic whisperings of voices through the trees."

The mist circled up, growing denser and denser until the form of Glyncara stood before him, clothed as before only in her trailing locks.

_Testy. Testy. Age will give you patience, child._

He sniffed. "I've years to spare."

_You are an infant yet, compared to the forest. And there are things that make IT seem newborn. You know nothing of the TRUE earth, only of that which grants you the power you yield. It has always been the way of wizards. _

"Whatever. Listen, I need a lock of your hair."

She stared at him with as much a blank expression as Yoko had.

"And how close can you appear to the edge of the wood?"

_I can appear to where the trees stop if I so wish, but my power is weak there. What mischief do you plan?_

"I plan to get you a suitor, lady."

Kall-Su sat and listened to the tales exchanged between his men and the trappers who also took shelter under the roof of the trading outpost. They had brought the head in this very evening, a combined party of his knights and the trappers who had been at the post when they had come in. It sat out in the yard now, an icy, horrid thing, staring with malice at the world out of glazed black eyes.

He did not enter into the conversation and no one, not even his men attempted to engage him. They knew him too well, and the trappers were wary of him among them at all, being common men and though eager to trade tails of the magic used in battle to defeat the monster, not easy with the man who had wrought it. It was no new occurrence, the wary glances and the flickering of superstition and fear in the trapper's eyes. Kall expected it, usually shunned gatherings such as this if possible, but was neatly trapped now, with men of his in need of time to recuperate from their wounds.

He gave them the fire in the small common room and sat as far as he could manage in a corner, with his armor beside him on the floor, but his cloak wrapped about him, preventing him from being totally unarmored before strange and mistrustful eyes. He would have gone up to the loft above the post where there were billets for sleeping, if he hadn't feared the dreams. He had no wish to wake with a cry upon his lips with witnesses about.

Kiro came over and sat on the floor beside Kall-Su, his arm bound in a sling at his side, his face somber and perhaps a little guilty. They sat for a while in silence, Kiro a good enough companion to his lord, for he shared the distaste for useless words.

"I was wrong to attack." He finally said. "We should have held back and let you deal with the thing and none of us would be licking wounds this night."

"You seemed to enjoy it."

"Until it hit me. Yes. After that bitter travel to find it, we were spoiling for a fight. It was unwise."

Kall thought so too, but he didn't say it. Kiro admitting it was hard enough on the man. "No real harm done, other than Sento's horse. Forget it."

"I know you dislike lodging here."

"Forget it, Kiro. It's no great discomfort."

His captain sighed, rubbing at an aching shoulder. "They've mulled hard cider by the fire, would you like some?"

"Yes." Kall said, because Kiro seemed intent on seeing him comfortable.

He sipped at the cider, which wasn't half bad and strong to boot and listened to the humm of conversation. His mind wondered, thinking about the frustrating spell lore in the book he was studying, of the winter festival to come and the onslaught of people down from the mountains that would be entering Sta-Veron. Merchants from the south and the west would come, eager to buy the furs and the mined gems the north had to offer. With them would come the inevitable priests, trying to gather converts. The fanatics who would wave their holy symbols and preach about salvation and damnation. They never changed, only now only the boldest would dare to denounce him to his face. It didn't matter, that they held their tongues, the looks, the holier than thou, venomous looks still shook him to the core, because he could never quite repress the memory of his grandfather and all his righteous cronies doing the same thing. So long in the grave that terrible old man, and he still haunted Kall. He would haunt him forever.

He shut his eyes and forced the tremulous memory away to that dark corner of his mind where he kept all the bad and horrible things hidden. Made himself relax and reconsider the logistics of the winter festival. There were a hundred preparations still to be made.

He let his guard down and something slipped past. Some sibilant, powerful presence that eased into his conscious thought and clung there stubbornly, even when startled to awareness of its presence he attempted to snap his defenses down and force it out. It struggled to be heard, a faint, familiar flavor. Not harmful, but insistent. He expanded his awareness enough to regard it and someone else's mental voice filled his head.

_Gods damn you, Kall-Su, you're harder to crack than an iron husk nut. Open up._ This last was demanded with a complete air of exasperation and impatience. He recognized the tone and the mental signature.

_Arshes. What do you want?_

_I wanted not to be up all night trying to get your attention, stupid man. _

He did not respond to that, used enough too her shortness with him to be terribly offended. Having grown up together, there had always been a certain sibling like rivalry between them for Schneider's affections. Not that he had not played them both, reveling in being the center of their young universes.

_You've got to come south with your army, Kall. You've got to hurry._

_Prey tell, why? Are we invading again?_

Silence from her. He felt her tenseness -- her consideration -- her elation, and he became wary of a sudden for the reasons behind it.

_Darshe is back, Kall. He's alive. Gara found out. Larz and the Prophet are after him. He bound somehow. Gara didn't get all that. Just that he's been stripped of his magic and that the Prophet did it. We think he's somewhere north of Judas. That is where Larz is sending his forces at any rate. They mean him harm. We need your help._

It all blurted into his head in a jumbled mass. It took him a moment to sort it all.

_Are you certain, Arshes?_

_Do I make mistakes of this magnitude?_

No. She didn't. She was entirely competent, when she was thinking straight. Which he wasn't sure was the case now, in light of the clamor he felt in her mind. Then the other name she had mentioned hit him.

The Prophet? That man's face had been a regular in his nightmares for sometime now. No rhyme or reason there, just a silent, malicious condemnation that he couldn't shake. He recalled the fleeting images from the first dream he'd had of the man. The one in Meta-Rikan. The man had hurt things that he loved.

He took a breath and another. Her impatience became palatable.

_Schneider's alive. How very predictable of him. North of Judas. How far north?_

_We don't know. We're trying to gather loyal forces and chase Larz' army down._

_How much of an army?_

_Gara only saw a legion or so leaving. There could be more. How long will it take you to gather forces and get from Sta-Veron across the mountains?_

_I'm on the southern side of the mountains now._

A pause on her part. A contemplation. _You're closer than we are then._

_I have only a handful of men with me. It will takes weeks to gather and move an army this time of year._

_Then send word and have them follow. You're a force unto yourself, Ice Lord and he may not have much time before Larz is upon him._

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath20.htm



	20. Chapter Twenty

aftermath20

**Twenty**

There was a certain delicacy involved in delivering a love charm, if one did not wish the victim to be aware of its existence. It was not as easy as it sounded in fables and village lore. One did not merely buy the charm, carry it within close proximity of the girl one wished to tumble and walaa -- instant lust. It was one thing to make the charm and recite the incantation and quite another to secret it about the person of the charmee and have them not notice it for long enough for the spell to take effect. Schneider had never in his long and prestigious career as a wizard, had the occasion to personally deal with a love charm. He had certainly never needed one for himself, and it had never crossed his mind that there was any other person who deserved adoration other than himself that might need one. He had always tended towards extreme egotism, though he might be loath to admit that it was anything but deserved.

He had gone back to the witch with a lock of greenish hair -- the old woman had lifted her scraggly brows curiously at that, but made no comment -- and sat in the back of her tent impatiently while she chanted and sweated over a burning tray of incense, reciting the spell. Herb based magic was so tedious, reserved for those that hadn't the actual power to perform a simple summoning and have some demon, spirit or elemental do one's will.

He took the finished pouch back to Yoko, along with lunch and discussed with her the possible ways he might secret the thing on Thrax without the man knowing it.

"Well, did he invite you back to his house?" she asked, munching on a crust of hard bread. There was a bottle of ale between them that she took delicate sips at, screwing her face up in distaste after each taste.

"No." He admitted. "I believe I took too much of his gold the last time. He probably would, if I pushed it."

"He seems to like you."

"Why wouldn't he?"

She smiled, as though his honest question amused her. "It probably wouldn't work in his home anyway. In the comfort of one's own house, an inconsistency is more likely to be noticed."

"He plays Pirates and Kings every evening at the tavern. That place is always crowded. Perhaps it might be slipped into a pocket and he would never be the wiser in the press."

"That sounds good. You said it needed a couple of hours to really take effect. Will he stay that long?"

"It can probably be arranged."

"Can you get it off him once it has. So he doesn't find it later and suspect?"

"I suppose I'll have to."

She tidied up the remains of lunch. "What will you do in the meanwhile."

A sly smile crossed his lips. "I believe I could think of something."

"But, my Lord. It could be weeks before we can follow through the mountains. The passes might be snowed in. The weather could turn bad. I highly recommend against this."

Kiro was upset. Kiro stood in the trampled snow around the trading post and gestured at the gray morning sky with his one good arm. Kall-Su intended to send him, the other injured man and two others back to Sta-Veron to marshal troops. Kiro would have had to go, regardless of his injury, being the captain of Kall's guard the only man he would trust to lead a legion south on his heels. The other fifteen men of the hunting party would accompany him.

"I am decided." Kall said quietly. "And you are wasting time, captain."

Kiro was too much an officer to whine. He merely nodded, hearing the finality of his lord's words and spoke sharply to the men in his command who were to accompany Kall south. Gave them orders of conduct, stern directions to keep their lord from harm, as if he were not capable of it himself. Then with a frown that neatly told how disconsolate he was with the path events were following, mounted and signaled his small party into motion.

Kall watched him go. His own men finishing the final packing of supplies onto the backs of their horses. By the time Kiro was out of sight within the shadow of snow crusted pines, he was mounting leading his men down slope. He kept them at a steady pace, the trails on this side of the mountain winding and sloping at a not too treacherous angle. The composure he had experienced when Arshes Nei had first told him of Schneider's resurrection having turned to an urgent expectancy over night. He had an itch of a sudden to see Schneider in the flesh. To prove that it was real, because he could not quite accept it from the ghostly tidings brought by Arshes.

The day passed, cold and clear and the heavy footed horses blew gouts of steam from their nostrils, heated by the exercise, keeping to a pace that was unnaturally vigorous, by benefit of Kall's impatience. He lent them strength of his own, a casual gifting that his men did not comment on, but were sure to have noticed, since their mounts never exhibited a weariness of step. It did wear of course, by the end of the day. On him more so than the animals. A simple, prolonged lending of strength was more draining than a quick, large exhalation of magical prowess. They had covered, by rote of many twists and turns, perhaps no more than twenty miles of terrain and that only be great effort. There were easier trails through the relatively mild Great Northern Range, but this one had been the closest at hand. Kiro and the forces he would gather would travel further west and take a less harsh route. Even then, they would be many weeks behind, an army traveling generally at a slower pace than a small group of men. Knowing this, Kiro would go damned light on the supply train, hoping for faster travel.

When they broke for camp, after dusk, he settled in his cloak while his men picketed the horses and prepared a meal. He closed his eyes, regathering energy he had spent all the long day. Someone offered him a cup of hot tea and he took it wordlessly.

He flung out his senses, hunting for that aura that he knew so well. He had always been aware, at some degree or another, of Schneider. The utter force of his personality made a mark. The extreme degrees of his magic were unique and left a scent. He had never been circumspect in his wizardry. One tended to know he was about. But there was nothing of him in the eather tonight. No slight trace of the presence that was Schneider. A mind that familiar he should have been able to locate and there was emptiness. Arshes had mentioned a binding. That was perhaps the reason. What power could create a binding ward strong enough to suppress Schneider? He knew of places where magic was null. Small inconsistencies of place and dimension which certain holy sects had discovered and warded into sanctuaries against _unholy _ intrusion. Elementals could be bound, as any creature without a true soul could be, with an effort of will, _if_ one was more powerful than the elemental itself. One could bind a minor wizard with relative ease, though the binding spells themselves were complicated, heliciously monotonous things to perform, though why one would bother when it was just as easy to place a geas of loyalty or if one were particularly callous an Accursed spell. One just did not bind the magic of a powerful wizard. It was not done, not with any spell that he had ever heard of. The notion that the Prophet had at his call such wardings made Kall uneasy.

Snow began to filter lightly down through the pine canopy. A few delicate flakes warning that a front moved somewhere. He broadened his awareness, hunting for the source of the storm and found a great boiling disturbance to the north east. Bad weather coming. The passes through which his army needed to pass would be snowed in. That would be a great inconvenience. He rose and waved a hand at his men that he needed no escort, and walked away from camp and into the grayness a snowbound landscape made of night. He preferred to avoid working magics before his men. They were well used to it, but still he did not like the wariness that came even into the eyes of his most trusted knights when arcane things were afoot.

He stood in the snow and whispered words of summoning. One need not shout to gain the attention of an elemental. One need merely be prepared for a battle of wills. A wind elemental answered the summons, one of the gusty northern ones with cores as cold as the tundra and spirits as strong as the winter was long. He knew its name. Eheezarha. That knowledge was power and it swirled about him in a tantrum that he had pulled it to him and sought to bind it to his will. It raged and howled and the snow flew up in a maelstrom, coating the rough bark of the trees. None of it touched Kall-Su. He stood with his cloak billowing about him and witnessed the tantrum without remark, exerting control and power over the Thing while it thrashed and exhausted its strength.

_What do you want, halfling? _ It hissed, finally subsided and hovering insubstantial before him. It trailed streamers of conical wind behind its main body.

"Careful." Kall rebuked its discourtesy. "Or I shall send you to a void where there is no air for you to play with."

It shimmered, humming. _What is your wish, master? _ A much humbler hissing.

"A game. Keep the storms from the mountains -- twenty miles west, twenty miles east -- clear and free of snow for the next month. Blow the storms elsewhere."

_Where, master?_

"South." Kall said. No use to dump all the weather on Sta-Veron and one thought that if armies were traveling north from Meta-Rikan, a bit of bad weather would slow their pace.

_Is that all?_

He waved a hand. "That's all. Go."

It dispersed with hardly a gust. Satisfied that Kiro would find little to block his passage when he returned with the army, Kall returned to camp.

Schneider watched Thrax from beneath his lashes, sitting at a place of honor around the gaming table, but not invited to play. At least not here under the gazes of the unsophisticated louts who worked for the lumber baron. Thrax's ego could only take so many defeats in the public eye. But he was more than willing to share his dreadful wine and his overfriendly mistress, who's hands kept wondering under the table.

The spell pouch was in Thrax's pocket, an easy enough task to accomplish in the press of bodies within the tavern. It had been there all night, throughout twelve games of Pirate's and King's and countless bottles of wine and rounds of hard liquor. There was not a sober soul in the tavern, Thrax chief among the inebriated. Schneider's vision was starting to tunnel. It was considerably easier to hold one's liquor when one had the arcane ability to banish intoxication at whim. That simple skill -- or the lack of it at the moment -- had slipped his mind when he'd sat out at the beginning of the night to wait for the effects of the love charm to start. Thrax's concentration hardly wavered from the game and lording his skills over his loggers. He was single minded and stubborn and entirely frustrating, which made Schneider consume all the more wine in the boredom of waiting.

The midnight hour was long past before the congregation began to break up, staggering home to their tents to get some sleep before they had to rise in the morning and trek back into the forest. Thrax rose, bellowing out what a fine night it had been. He finished off the last dregs of wine in his cup and banged it down on the table top. His body guard began gathering the playing pieces together and handed them and the board to the barkeep, who put them under the bar.

Schneider rose and staggered a step sideways, prepared for cooperation from the room at large and not getting it. Thrax laughed, grabbing a his shirt to steady him.

"Maybe I should play you now, Darshe and get all my gold back."

Schneider refrained from answering, busy trying to make the floor settle under his feet. The reflex urge to magic the intoxication away was so strong the wards at his wrists tingled warningly.

"Come on, you can sleep it off at my house tonight." Thrax offered good naturedly, putting one arm about Schneider's shoulders and the other about his mistress. They made it to the street, with Thrax's body guard trailing behind, the lot of them none to steady on their feet and Schneider cursing the old witch for making a dud charm.

"Go on ahead. See her home." Thrax told his bodyguard and put his mistress into the man's care. "I want to talk with Darshe."

When they were a good ways up the street, Thrax sighed and belched, then laughed at himself. Schneider watched him warily.

"You know, I like you, Darshe. I really like you." Thrax squeezed his shoulder and Schneider had a moment's fear that the old witch had miserably screwed up the charm.

"And I couldn't talk with her around -- by the gods, I've had these urges all night. I can't get them out of my head."

Cautiously, Schneider took a step backwards. Thrax threw out his hands in frustration. "I just --- these feelings -- in my head I hear a voice. I see a face. She's so lovely I can't think of anything but her. I know her and yet I've never met her."

Ah, that was better. "Really? A woman?"

"A woman. The woman. My woman. She's somewhere. I know she is, but I don't know where. It's like an itch, knowing she's out there somewhere and -- and I know she's waiting for me. I need your help to find her."

"Well," Schneider said slowly, careful with his words. "Do you know what she looks like?"

"Like night. Like the brightest sun. Like flowers. Like the most beautiful thing you've ever laid eyes upon." Thrax was looking up into the night sky with rapture on his face. He swayed slightly, whether from inebriation or the effects of the charm, one was uncertain. Regardless the spell seemed to have taken rather sudden and devastating effect.

Schneider held up a finger to comment on Thrax's energetic description and lost his train of thought. He took a breath, in efforts to clear his head. "I believe -- that I've seen a lady that fits that description in the forest."

Thrax stared at him in drunken hope. "You haven't."

"Well, actually, yes."

Thrax grasped his arms with enough gusto to force him back a step. "Where? Who is she?"

"Her name is Glyncara. I might show you."

"Glyncara." Thrax breathed the name like sigh. For a moment his eyes grew dreamy and far away. "Show me. Show me where she is."

One had to be incredibly grateful to strong spirits imbibed in mass. No sober man, even one altered by a love spell would so blindly follow a stranger into the forest to meet a heretofore unknown woman. Whether one had a hard on for said woman or not.

Thrax only fell down once on the pitted trail that lead into the great wood. Schneider managed to avoid that indignity only by the grace of having Thrax to catch hold of when his balance left him. Thrax kept asking how far. Schneider wasn't quite certain himself. He stopped in the darkness, well into the wood, and Thrax stopped with him, peering into the night.

"Where is she?" he whispered.

"Glyncara." Schneider called out. "Come out. Come out. You've company."

"There's no one here." Thrax complained, sounding spooked, alone in the forest that he was destroying.

Schneider laughed and flung out his arms. There was fog on the ground around them. Thrax didn't notice. Thrax wasn't so subtle in his perceptions.

She came up out of the ground like a banshee, a sudden formation of mist and fog and wind that rustled the limbs on trees and sent debris up into the air. Thrax cried out in fright and threw up his arms to shield his face from flying leaves and dirt. Glyncara stood before them, clothed in nothing but hair, a greenish glow infusing the air about her. Her eyes were alight with power and anger.

_Is this the man who destroys my forest?_

"This would be him." Schneider said and leaned against a tree, picking leaves out of his hair.

Thrax stared at her, eyes globes of awe. His lips trembled, sweat stood out on his face. "It's you." He whispered. "You're so beautiful."

_You foul human refuse._ Glyncara spat. She actually spat on the ground at Thrax's feet. Thrax stared at the spot her spittle had landed with reverence.

"My love. My beautiful Glyncara. Don't speak so. You wound me to the heart."

_I shall tear out your heart. You have destroyed in a few years time what has taken a millennia to grow. And you care not. You do it on a whim._

"No. No. I do it build an empire. An empire I shall devote to making you happy. Tell me what I need to do. What will make you love me?"

_Love you?_ She cried, then turned her forest colored eyes to Schneider in stupdification.

"Give him a task to win your love." He suggested, shrugging.

"Yes. Anything." Thrax agreed, a dog willing to please. It was a very good charm. The hedge witch deserved a bonus.

_Bring back my forest._ Glyncara cried. _Renew the life you stole._

"But -- how?" Thrax dropped to his knees, almost crying. He looked from Glyncara to Schneider helplessly. "I would do anything. Tell me how?"

Glyncara fumed, her skin changing colors like a chameleon in her anger. Brown to green to yellow.

_Stop cutting down my trees._

"Yes. Yes. Of course, my love." Thrax nodded enthusiastically.

"Plant a tree." Schneider suggested and laughed. The whole thing seemed so terribly funny, he was having a hard time controlling his mirth.

"A forest of trees." Thrax agreed. Glyncara lifted a brow in thought.

_Yes. A forest of trees. Set your murderers to planting saplings on the land you devastated. That is as good a start as any._

Thrax smiled. Schneider had a thought and chuckled. "Of course, when he does all this, it will only be fair to consummate your love."

Thrax absolutely beamed and nodded. Glyncara, in control of her composure again ignored Schneider completely. _Go then, if you wish my good will and prepare the seeding. _ She flung out an arm imperiously and Thrax started. He blinked, looking miserable at the thought of leaving her. Miserable at the notion of disobeying his true love. Then he climbed awkwardly to his feet and stumbled past Schneider, fleeing into the wood towards Thraxtown.

Schneider laughed so hard tears ran down his cheeks. He slid down the tree and sprawled in the leaves, holding his sides. Glyncara glared at him a moment then started to fade.

"Don't you even think about it, wood witch." He snapped, humor evaporated. "You owe me."

_Do I? It remains to be seen whether the devastation ceases._

"It will. He's your lap dog, now. Direct him as you will." He did not see fit to mention that the spell would probably only last a few short weeks.

"I lived up to my part of the bargain. You live up to yours. Take these damn things off." He lifted his wrists savagely. She stood there, half transparent, her legs faded into mist.

_I cannot._

"What?" It came out a low, viscous hiss.

_I do not have the power. Perhaps not even when my forest was whole. _

"You lying bitch. You tricked me."

_I did not. You mislead yourself into thinking that I did. I never said as much._

He started cursing. He struggled up, willing to attack her with nothing but hands since there were no other options open to him.

"She didn't. Say that she would." Yoko's voice quietly said.

He whirled, caught at the tree to his right to steady himself, and saw her emerge from the shadows, wrapped in her cloak and his, limping only slightly.

"How--?"

_I summoned her here. Between the two of you, she has more the head for reason._

Schneider glared. Yoko looked down, arms wrapped about herself.

"Damn you." He felt sick. He was so angry the whole of his body shook. His vision blurred and he blinked wetness away, furious. "I hope your forest burns."

"Rushie. She never promised. She only said _perhaps_."

"To hell with you too. You would take her side."

Yoko blinked at him, shocked, hurt. He didn't care. At the moment his own hurt was worse. He needed his power back. He had to have it back. He could not endure this helplessness.

_Go to Saldorn. In the mountains to the west._

"What's in Saldorn?" Yoko asked when he refused to.

_Mother. _

"Who's mother?"

_Everyone's. _ Glyncara smiled serenely. _Mother will have the power to grant your request. Mother can grant all requests. Here. Take this and the way will be clear. Present this and Mother will honor your wish._

Something glowed in the air before Schneider. An intense, blue green light that hovered at his chest. He put a hand out under it, and it dropped into his palm. It was not hot or cold, it merely was. The light faded and all that was left was a simple acorn. He stared at it dubiously. Yoko shifted closer to see what he had been given.

"An acorn?" Yoko murmured.

Schneider lifted a brow caustically. "You have got to be kidding? First you lie to me, then you suggest I go on some fools errand after some great being I've never heard of and you give me an acorn to trade for a wish?" He let it drop to the ground disdainfully.

_I never lied. I have given you the way to freedom. It is not my concern that you are so jaded as to not accept it. _

"Jaded? You crazy bitch. Play your games, then. And may the gods help you when I do get my power back."

"Rushie." Yoko knelt to pick up the acorn. She held it against her breast.

"Shut up, Yoko." He whirled, stalking away.

"Please." She cried. "You're not being reasonable." She turned desperate eyes back to Glyncara, who was fading into mist. "He didn't mean it. He didn't."

_He did. But he may change his mind. It is his way, is it not? Your curse is gone. Farewell. And then she was gone._

"Where are you going?" Yoko paced him, despite the dull discomfort in her ankle. The healing spell had cured all but the residue ache. The gash in her leg was almost gone. Mentally, she still favored the leg and probably would for several days to come. He wasn't talking to her. He was in the midst of a tantrum, she realized, having not gotten his way and not used to it. He was also weaving slightly in his step. Which was unusual and worried her.

"What's wrong with you?" she demanded. He sniffed and pulled at the strip of cloth at the end of his braid. The discarded tie dropped to the ground as he began pulling his hair out of the braid.

"Ooohh." She hissed, exasperated. "You are so impossible. Its like you never led anyone astray or used someone to your own ends. Noooo. Not you. You were always so angelic and honest in your dealings."

He turned on her, eyes flashing dangerously, a finger stabbing at her face. "When have I lied to you? When have I not said what I meant? What need did I ever have to lie, when the truth was always so much more fun?"

"Oh, as in, why bother with a lie when you can piss more people off with the simple truth? Is that what you mean?" She smacked his finger away and matched his glare.

"Exactly." He snarled back. "But it doesn't answer the question."

"To hell with the question, you idiot. She's told us where we can find someone who can remove the wards. Isn't that enough?"

"And you believe her? After she made me jump through hoops leading me to think she could remove them?"

"YES. I do."

"Naive, foolish girl."

"I believe in a lot of things the rest of the world thinks are terrible. You tell me how naive I really am?"

He opened his mouth, then snapped it shut and started walking again. He careened off a tree and cursed.

"Are you drunk?" She accused.

He refused to answer.

"Fine. Be that way. Stubborn man. I don't care what you do." She sniffed, crossing her arms, veering off from the trail in the direction of the little brook that had become her temporary home. She plopped down next to her stolen sack of goods and listened to the sounds of the forest, brooding. Angry at him being angry at her. As if he had any right, when she was just trying to make him see reason. Irritating, nasty tempered wizard.

She heard him crashing through the underbrush, ungainly and noisy in his present state and presently he stumbled into the little glade. She glared up at him. He ignored her. He slid down a tree to sit in the soft moss, his arms resting on his knees, his hair obscuring his face. The silence began to wear. She hated it.

"She took the curse off me." She finally said to break it. "She kept her word on that."

He said nothing. She sniffed. His head was bent. All she could see was a fall of hair.

"Rushie?"

Nothing. She rose to her knees and crept over to him. Touched his shoulder and he started so violently that she shied back, afraid that he might hit her out of reflex. He blinked at her, blurry, blue eyes veined with red.

"I'm sorry." She said.

"Forget it." He murmured, reached out and caught her, pulling her in towards him. He smelled of cheap wine. She placed her hands against him, trying to push away, not ready to forgive him yet, but he wrapped his other arm about her and without twisting and turning violently, she was trapped. However he did not seem to have more in mind than holding her, for he relaxed back against the tree, shutting his eyes and was very soon asleep. Wonderful. An irritating, nasty tempered, _drunk_ wizard. She only preyed he might be more open to reason in the morning when he was clearer of head.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath21.htm



	21. Chapter Twenty-one

aftermath21

**Twenty-One**

Arshes Nei had eighty men in the mountains of the east. Eighty men out of the ten thousand that had once followed her. Her armies had been hit tri-fold over the years. First by Schneider himself when he had protected Meta-Rikan against her. Then battling Kall-Su while he was under Ansasla's control and finally against Ansasla itself. She had no desire to rebuild after that, with Schneider gone and the wars over. She had little desire to do anything. Her remaining forces scattered, returned to home and families in lands that she had taken and still held fief over. Only the most loyal stayed. Her knights, those whose lives had known nothing but war and following the Thunder Empress.

Gara had more. Gara's ninja were ever more elusive in battle than men on heavy horse and knights who sought out the front lines in the name of honor. His men struck from behind and in the shadows and survived more easily because of it. Still, he was damned short on men, considering the integration of southern forces under his command on the border. There had been marriages and liaisons between his men and southerners. Unions that it would be hard to break and harder still to betray if it came down to hostilities between Larz and the remaining Lords of Havoc. Damned inconvenient. And damned short on fighting men. What they did have on their side was an impressive array of arcane might. Gara and Arshes alone were the match of most legions. Of course so were Larz and his damned warrior clerics and the gods only knew what sort of power the Prophet had been hiding all these years. Gara hated going up against unknown enemies.

The only advantage to their limited resources was alacrity. A small force could travel quickly and quietly, where an army moved at a snails pace, requiring tremendous supplies and tearing a swath across the land that no one could miss. Of course word would get back to Meta-Rikan what they were doing. The men in the garrisons along the border who were not trusted enough for them to recruit would see that it did. No one would stop them or even attempt it. Gods knew no one of the southerners along the border knew what was going on in the south, but they would be honor bound to report it. Gara didn't fault them for that. They were good men and he hoped he never had to face a single one of them on a field of battle. He despised killing comrades.

It took two days to gather forces and supplies. To outfit them and find mounts for the lot of them and then they were off. Arshes was champing at the bit. Focused and more alive than she had been in years. The power and the strength radiated from her. Gara wished she might have found it before this. He mourned that her vitality seemed dependent on Schneider. Even if she never turned her heart his way, he would have wished better for her. Would have wished she loved herself enough to find happiness without relying on another living soul.

But wishes never came true and reality was a harsh and malevolent mistress. He was used to the crack of her whip and protested only vaguely. Accept and go on if a body wanted to live without the world on his shoulders. Gods help Arshes and even Kall-Su, who had never seemed to get that concept.

And then there was Schneider who never even worried about it.

There were cannons and explosions and various other nasty, painful things going on inside Schneider's head. His stomach rebelled violently at whatever substance he had partaken of last night. At least Yoko wasn't talking to him. That was one good thing. Otherwise he would have had to scream at her to be quiet and he had the notion that that would have only invoked her screeching back at him in an explosion of anger and frustration that had been building since the little scene with the forest bitch.

At the moment he could have cared less. At the moment he was soundly and thoroughly cursing Angelo's ancestors, any offspring he might produce and his black soul for depriving Schneider of the simple magic of banishing a hangover.

It was windy and rainy just to make the morning perfect. He stalked down the muddy road to Thraxtown with his cloak wrapped about him and his loose, sodden hair clinging to his face. Yoko marched before him, her hood up and her head held high, full of righteous indignation. They'd had a short, aborted fight this morning, upon her waking him, concerning the damned acorn and Glyncara's ambiguous instructions. It had started with her telling him what a fool he was and him telling her to shut up because the sound of her voice hurt his head and gone on to name calling and her throwing cloak, sack and a handy stick her grasping little fingers had happened upon at him, before she had stalked out of camp with the declaration that she was going to see if the curse had really been lifted.

He had held his head and cursed, then scrambled up to follow her just in case she did turn into a tree -- he wouldn't put it past that lying wood bitch -- and he had to mark the spot where she put her roots down for future reference. But, she didn't. She stepped out of the forest onto the muddy trail and stood staring out at Thraxtown, where a fair bit of activity was going on outside the town walls. She turned and gave him an imperious glare and announced.

"I'm going to find out if anyone there knows where Saldorn is. You can do whatever you want. I'm sure I don't care."

He waved a hand at her negligently, ushering her forth. She sniffed and started marching. He stood miserably at the edge of the forest for a few minutes, leaning against a young tree, massaging his temples. One supposed she deserved whatever reception she got upon entering Thraxtown. She would probably get a rather friendly one, considering the only women there were either ancient hags like the witch who bartered in goods to make their livelihood or whores who served the loggers. And bearing in mind the quality of the whores he had seen, Yoko would be a pearl in the midst of swine. If she got past the gates without being tumbled, it would be a miracle.

"Stupid bitch." He muttered under his breath and followed her.

There were wagons coming in from the forest, but they were not loaded with lumber. Rather they were filled with hundreds of tiny saplings. Befuddled loggers accompanied them past the town and out into the razed land where it seemed the majority of Thrax's men were cultivating the earth, pulling up dead stumps and planting the young trees.

Yoko got immediate attention before she even reached the gates. Men stopped their work to stare and make lewd suggestions. She ignored them, on her mission and Schneider glared and put his hand on the hilt of his sword when they made to follow her inside the gates. The hedge witch had closed her shop. The tent flaps down and fastened. He supposed she had put two and two together and figured her love charm had something to do with Thrax's sudden and erratic change in behavior. One hoped he never figured it out and took vengeance on the old woman.

Ahead, Yoko had stopped a man and was talking with him. The man, his hands full of shovels and pick axes was practically drooling down on her. Schneider stopped a few yards behind her and crossed his arms, moving his cloak enough to make the sword visible. The man's attention flicked to him, then back to Yoko, then nervously back to him, recognizing him as Thrax's new friend and making the bright assumption that he was Yoko's protector. The excited look died in his eyes to be replaced by a wistful one, and he answered her question with a shake of his head and went on his way, glancing back once to admire her from the rear.

"What are you trying to do?" he inquired. "Find a new profession?"

"Oh, go away. You're bothersome when you're hungover." She waggled her fingers at him in dismissal. He drew a sharp breath through his teeth, offended.

"Somebody has to make an effort to find out where Saldorn is?" she added, looking about for someone else to accost.

"And you think you're going to find them in this backwater pit? Dream on, Yoko. I haven't heard of anyplace called Saldorn and believe me, I've been around."

"Glyncara said it was in the mountains to the west. That's a lot of ground to cover."

"Well, I hate Glyncara."

Yoko waggled her fingers again, brushing aside his animosity. "I wonder what she meant when she said the Acorn would guide us?"

"I could care less."

She sniffed, tucked damp hair behind her ear and began to walk towards the tavern. He ground his teeth in frustration, figuring that even with his magic, Yoko was impossible to deal with when she was in a snit. And without it, he was not in the mood for a fight in a tavern to protect her virtue. What he had left of it, at any rate.

"Wait a minute, Yoko."

She turned to look at him inquisitively.

"I think I might know where we can find Saldorn."

"Really? Where?"

He shrugged. "Let me introduce you to Thrax."

Thrax was riding high the wave of infatuation. He was all smiles. His mistress's had been reduced to housemaids and were not happy with the demotion. He ushered Schneider and Yoko into his house, wrapped his arms about the former, to his distaste, hugging him and bowed to the latter. Yoko smiled in bemusement.

"I see you've wasted no time." Schneider remarked dryly.

"There is none to waste if I'm to find my way into my ladies heart. And her bed." He said the latter aside to Schneider, but Yoko heard and rolled her eyes. "And I've you to thank, Darshe. How you knew where to find her, I'll never know, but I thank the gods."

"Fine. Whatever. Might I look at your book collection?"

Thrax was willing to allow him anything. There was a volume Schneider recalled seeing on his first visit concerning the geology in the western hemisphere. He took the volume down and sat at the small gaming table before the fire while Thrax went on to Yoko about how lucky he was to have discovered his everlasting love for Glyncara. Yoko kept casting dark glances at Schneider as if she were not pleased with the man's gushing. Well, he couldn't blame her for that. It was getting old fast.

There were maps and maps and maps. On every thing from rock formation to glacial movement a million years ago. The old man who had written it had a grasp on science that hadn't been seen for over 400 years. It was mostly boring, dusty stuff, and going over it with a head aching from too much drink was not pleasant in the least. But there, finally, in a section devoted to listing provinces and ancestral claims on the mountains he came across the name Saldorn. A hundred miles of rocky, uninhabited land in the heart of the central western range. No one owned it or claimed it.

He tapped one sharp nail on the map in irritation. A whole damned chain of mountains, Glyncara gave him to search for this _Mother,_ who might or might not exist at all.

"Thrax." He snapped, interrupting the man's conversation with Yoko. They both looked at him in surprise. He was not feeling pleasant or courteous enough today to care. "I need horses and not those damned draft horses. And supplies."

Thrax blinked at him, love charm or not, not a man used to being ordered about. Yoko touched his arm and smiled. "Of course we have gold."

"He already owes me gold." Schneider said, closing the book, but not before surreptitiously tearing out the map of Saldorn. If he was going to embark on this, he might as well have a ghost of a clue to where he was going.

Four hundred miles from the foot hills of the Great Northern Range to the plains where the north and the south met. There was no exacting border. No city -- at least not anymore -- that claimed the vast plainlands. One just ceased to be in the north at some vague point and gradually delved into southern territories. Over two weeks of constant riding and lent strength or not, the horses were at their limit. Kall-Su was at his. It was one thing to sustain a single horse, but fifteen was pushing it to the breaking point. When he slept at night, he was too tired to dream. That was some slight consolation. They passed a small farming town and bought three remounts, the only horseflesh of good quality the town had to its name and they relieved the pressure some small bit.

His lieutenant wisely pleaded that they slow the pace, having covered incredible distance in so short of time and Kall consented finally. The plan had been to stop at the next village, give the horses a barn to rest in and good grain to put the fat back over their ribs. Planted fields told that they were not far from a settlement. A narrow, muddy track wound through them, leading the way. The rain had been a predominate companion for the last weeks. There was only so much complaint one could utter, considering the forces one had set in motion to send the bad weather south. There was standing water in the fields and the horses hooves made suckling sounds as they plodded down the track.

Over the rise and the small town spread before them.

"My Lord." One of his men exclaimed and Kall-Su looked up, wiping wet hair from his eyes. One the road before them, riding up the rise was a band of armored men. And beyond those, peppering the area about the town were many more.

His men moved for their weapons, road weary and easily agitated. He held out a hand to halt them. "No blade drawn save on my word." He said quietly, scanning the men that had hesitated on the track at the sight of them, but now road forward warily. Eight armed men. Two archers among them. All of them outfitted for speed. Scouts more than likely. They approached and stopped a few yards from Kall's party and their leader held up a gauntleted hand in greeting.

"Ho there. What business have you on this road?"

Kall lifted a pale brow. "I was not aware that one needed particular business to travel these lands? Have the border lands been claimed by some sovereign state?"

The leader narrowed his eyes in consideration, taking in the armor, drenched and road dirty though it was, the quality of the horses and tack and came to the conclusion that these were not common travelers. "They have not. But for the safety of my men, I must ask anyway. Who are you and what business have you here?"

"My business was to find dry stables for my mounts, but it seems from the look of things that the stables are full."

"They are." The leader agreed. "You didn't say your name, traveler?"

"No. I didn't."

A frown. The man did not like the answer, or perhaps he was leery of his duty. "My orders are to detain all travelers, who do not live in these parts. You clearly do not. Until I know your business and that you are no harm to the men that follow, I must ask that you come with me."

Kall's men rustled, indignant at the threat. Kall sat unmoving, eyes calm. "Who's orders?"

"King Larz of Meta-Rikan."

"Ah. And is he hereabouts?"

"I see no reason to answer your question, when you won't answer mine."

Kall allowed the ghost of a smile to touch his lips. "Lord Kall-Su. Tell him that I would very much like to speak to him."

The man's eyes widened. The men behind him exchanged nervous glances. Hands drifted to weapons, which caused Kall's men to shift uneasily. The scout leader whispered something to the man next to him and that one whirled his horse and galloped off down the track towards the town. The leader of the scouting party straightened his back and eyed Kall with more deference.

"My lord, forgive my brusqueness. Are there more men than these?"

Kall shrugged, not willing to ease anyone's mind about the forces at his command. The scout looked as if he hadn't expected an answer. There were more riders coming up the slope, leaving the northerners fairly outnumbered. There was nothing to do but cooperate unless he wished to bring magic into play and Kall did not just then. Really, if one wanted to find out if the rumors concerning Schneider were true, then one ought to go to a reliable source. Though the presence of these men and the hint of an army behind them was evidence enough to suggest that Larz was after something.

"If you would come with us, my lord." The scout asked, aware that if Kall did not wish to cooperate there was no way their small numbers of men could make him.

Kall merely inclined his head and urged his tired mount into a trot. The southerner's surrounded his men, wary and looking none to happy about the duty. They bypassed the town, riding across newly harvested fields. The rain had begun again, this time a drenching downpour that obscured the sound of the horses passage. A man cursed the weather. The shower obscured the land in a gray mist. Visibility was limited to mere yards. It shrouded the vast encampment until the very last and then only the outline of tents were discernible. Hundreds and hundreds of tents, staked to the sodden earth, hiding an army beneath their canvas roofs. Men looked out from beneath the flaps at their passage. Dim, miserable faces besieged by unnatural weather.

A rider sloshed through the mud to intercept them. He and the scout leader exchanged low words.

"My Lord," the newcomer said, a man in a tunic and armor that might have been very fine dry, but was sodden dark material in the rain. "Your men must stay here. They may not venture further into the heart of this camp."

"No." Kall said simply.

"My lord, it is the will of the king and for the protection of the king. Please abide by his word and he shall grant you guest rights in his camp."

"Guest rights? I have come here under armed guard. What guest right is that?"

"My lord, it is a delicate situation. Please. You have my word that your men will be safe. As will you."

The man waited, earnest desperation in his face. Kall thought at least that this one man did not lie. What vows Larz would break remained to be seen. He inclined his head, motioned to his men to cooperate and rode past his guard in the company of the king's man. Through rows upon rows of tents, enough for him to estimate that no minor force bivouacked in these waterlogged fields. The tents grew larger, officer's quarters, and the guards grew more numerous. A large tent seemed the center of a fair deal of traffic. Men stood on duty outside it in the rain. His escort ushered him in, nodding to the guard as he passed. They did not bother to ask he give up his weaponry, not fools enough to assume he would be helpless without it. An outer section housed administrative staff. A harried man sat behind a field desk, conducting the business of an encampment this size. He looked up -- they all did -- at Kall-Su's entrance.

"My lord." His guide said. "Let me take your sodden cloak."

Kall waved him away. "No need." With a whisper that was barely a breath from his lips he cast a spell and dried himself. It was not vanity, precisely, more a desire to meet Larz on equal footing, rather than as a drenched rat appearing before a lofty and dry cat. Someone exchanged whispers from a corner, one priest to another, the both of them fingering holy symbols at their chests, no doubt to protect themselves from the evil in their midst.

His guide held the flap to the inner sanctums of the tent aside and Kall walked through. There was lantern light and warmth from a brazier behind that flap. A spacious inner room protected from the weather, but little more luxury than that. Larz had never been particularly vain. A field desk, a broad cot, a wooden stand which held the king's armor, a small table upon which a bottle of wine sat. The king stood with his hands to the brazier. He looked up, and was not so political to smile in greeting when Kall came in. Kall did not himself, but stood waiting for Larz to make the first move.

"Well, you're a bit far afield from your normal haunts, Kall-Su." Larz moved over to the table and sat down, motioning Kall to take the second chair. Kall did, carefully, gauging his response.

"As are you. Practicing maneuvers in the borderlands, are you?"

"Ah. One can never get enough practice marshaling troops in the rain."

Kall didn't answer. He folded his hands before him, watching Larz's face. Not vain, Larz, but impassioned. What he believed in, he believed wholly in. He could be, as Kall well knew, a deadly enemy.

"I had heard you no longer cared to visit the south, Kall-Su."

"Did you?"

"Do you come casually, or is there an agenda planned?"

Larz knew exactly why he was here, Kall could see it in his eyes, in the faint pensive smile that touched his lips.

"I've heard a rumor, your majesty."

"Have you? What will you do about it?"

"I haven't decided. It would depend, on whether it holds truth or not."

"And if it does?" Larz reached for the wine, poured himself a glass and motioned at a second with the lip of the bottle. Kall shook his head. Larz shrugged and sat the bottle down, taking up his glass.

"Is that why you're here? Chasing rumors?" Kall asked.

"Oh, very much so, Ice Lord. I'm very much committed."

"Well then, it seems as if our purposes may clash."

"That would be unfortunate. Quite unfortunate. I value trade from the north."

"As I do from the south. I've heard disturbing things. Perhaps you might enlighten me as to the truth of the matter."

"Ah-- and then we come to the truth. Yours, mine or _his _ ? There are so many to choose from and so little chance of you believing any but that which benefits your dark lord."

"I owe allegiance to no one. "

"Really, Kall-Su who are you trying to deceive? Me or yourself?"

Kall looked away, into the bright center of the brazier. Larz was baiting him. For what purpose he could only guess. He chose not to rise and take it. He did not need to ask questions to get the answers he wanted. Since Larz and his army were parked here, they had not located Schneider. Since they sent scouts along the northwestern road, then they sought him in that direction. Arshes had mentioned the Great Forest, which might have been two or three days ride from this position to the south west.

"I think," he said slowly. "That I've tired of this conversation."

He began to rise. Larz held out an hand. "I can't let you interfere in this."

Kall lifted a brow inquisitively. "Shall you try and stop me now and save yourself the trouble later?"

Larz put down his glass, meeting Kall's eyes steadily. "I would hardly be an honorable host, if I did."

Kall realized of a sudden that Larz did not wish to be here. In this place, doing this thing. Oh, he performed the task because he thought it needed doing, but there was a weariness behind his eyes that spoke of distaste. Larz did not want a fight with him, but he would if pressed. Larz had always gone against the odds. And at this moment, with an army behind him and who knew how many clerics at his beck and call hidden among those many tents and Kall's own exhaustion from weeks of magic draining travel, he might actually win.

"I hope, that we do not meet save under better circumstances." Kall said, a veiled pleasantry at best. "Shall I find my own way back or will your man take me?"

Larz waved a hand. "He'll take you."

Fifty miles to the south, a second great force traveled at the fringe of the Great Forest. Holy knights on heavy horse, church foot soldiers in talberts that bore the symbol of the High God. Angelo rode at the fore, beside a standard bearer who held the emblem of the church proudly. His demeanor was quiet and fragile as befit a man who had only recently recovered from an assassination attempt. His men were awed at his strength of will to take to horse after such grievous wounds and follow in the footsteps of his king. Well, almost. Larz had gone north and Angelo had directed his forces more westerly, claiming to have had a vision urging him in that direction.

When he closed his eyes in meditation, the men around him hardly spoke in fear of disturbing him. He sought after something not at all holy. It was a frustration, tracking the location of the wards, when it should have been a thoughtless task. They swam in and out of focus as if something blocked their presence. Some contrivance of Schneider's to throw him off his track. But it wouldn't work. Angelo had enough of a glimmer from the wards he knew so well, to lead him in the right direction. He sought after them now, concentrating on locating a magic that stood out from the mundane world around it. There were presence's in the Great Wood that tickled at the edge of his awareness. Great magics and small ones, but none of them what he sought. And to the north he felt the familiar presence of Larz -- a dim throbbing power that had the tell tale traces of the greater power he had been infused with over twenty years past when he had defeated Schneider. The spirit his circle of clerics had summoned to possess him was gone but some of its residue remained, making Larz greater than he was. And with Larz was something else. Something more potently magic. Something cold and familiar.

The Prophet's eyes snapped open. He drew a breath in surprise. He had expected the Ice Lord eventually, but not so soon. And not in the same vicinity as Larz. He focused his inner vision, and saw nothing but rain and mist. And the Ice Lord was leaving. Angelo felt a sudden irrational anger at fools and kings. Larz had him in his grasp and he let him go. The incompetent. God curse the fate that placed Angelo fifty miles from Larz and incapable of stopping the Ice Lord himself.

Priests of his were in that camp though. Men who were well used to their lord and master using their eyes and ears for his own. He sent a message with strict instructions to his man and cursed under his breath afterwards.

"Your holiness, is something amiss?" The standard bearer asked in concern. The Prophet smiled serenely. "Nothing my son. Nothing at all."

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   [1]: aftermath22.htm



	22. chapter 22

aftermath22

**Twenty -Two**

King Larz of Meta-Rikan sipped thoughtfully at the finest vintage of western wine to cross the mountains in a dozen years. Kall-Su had been stupid to turn it down. But Kall-Su was unpredictable, as wizards tended to be, and not to be forced into anything not of his own conception. He had after all, learned at the feet of the master of stubborn pride, so one could hardly be surprised at arrogant superiority. Larz had a full quota of it himself, being the son of a line of great kings and holding the south in his hands. It was not a responsibility he took lightly. He cherished his position and not for power alone, but for the fact that the people and the devastated lands of the south needed a strong leader and he felt there was no one more capable than himself.

He hated letting Kall-Su walk out his tent. There would be hell to pay for that courtesy, when they finally did catch up with Schneider. But, aside from declaring open war on the North and testing his strength and his armies against the Ice Lord, there was nothing else to do. One did not hold a wizard against his will, without paying a price in blood and death.

There was a commotion in the outer section of his tent. The hushed tones of excited voices. His aide shifted the separating flaps and stepped in, a wild eyed pair of priests behind him.

"My Lord, these priests have a message from the Prophet."

Larz beckoned them in. "What has his holiness to say?"

"Majesty, a holy sword has just ridden in with a message. The Prophet has had a vision days past and desperately sought to get his message here in time."

"A vision? Where is this message?"

A rolled piece of parchment tied with a blue ribbon was handed to him. He unfolded it and read, while the priests exchanged anxious looks.

_Your Majesty_

_May the High God grant this warning reach you in time. The God has sent me_

_a vision. Dark Schneider's allies are grouping. The Ninja Master and the Thunder _

_Empress come from the east and the Ice Lord descends from the North. They must_

_not be allowed to reach him. I saw the Ice Lord in your grasp. You must not allow_

_him to slip free or all is lost. Use any means to snare him that you must. I am three days hard ride behind you. _

_Angelo_

Larz crumpled the paper, swearing. The Prophet had known days ago that this would happen. The man continued to amaze him. He also did not know what he asked. But the warning only served to heighten Larz' own sense of unease in letting Kall-Su free to work whatever mischief he might in the name of Dark Schneider.

He threw the missive on the floor and stood, barking an order at the priests to gather their peers. And to his aide.

"Sound the horns and get my armor."

And with disquiet on their faces they ran to do his bidding.

The faint claxom of horns sounded in the distance. Kall-Su's horse pricked its ears, lifting its weary head in nervousness at a sound it well knew. A call to arms. How very predictable for Larz to change his mind after the fact. Kall couldn't blame him. If their positions had been switched, he would never have let Larz leave the camp.

Kall's men looked to him expectantly, as any fifteen men would that might shortly have an army on their heels. He said nothing and kept to the slow, steady pace that his tired mount was able to maintain. He did not wish to slaughter those men. He did not wish to see the Dragon guard, a great many of its officers made up of men who had fought Ansasla with him and his, die under his hand.

Past the sodden fields and the town that supported them and one of his men said softly. "They come."

He turned his horse to look. From behind them there was a dark line in the mist the rain made of the distance. Faintly the jingle of tack could be discerned. The calvery first and the foot soldiers after that.

"What shall we do, my lord?"

"Nothing." He said quietly. "Just ride. Don't kill your horses."

They stared at him and at each other, then with a short nod from their lieutenant, they kicked their mounts into a canter and sloshed forward, leaving Kall alone. He folded his hands on the saddle horn and whispered a word. Power gathered in the air, fickle and truant and needing to be harnessed. With more force he spoke the lines of an incantation, adding power and purpose to the force he had summoned, directing and melding a certain spell to his needs. The rain and the saturated ground were his allies. The breath from his horse's flaring nostrils began to steam with a sudden cold.

The air turned white with snow. The fields before him glazed over. First a transparent, thin layer of freeze, then quickly a thickening slab of pure ice that spread like a living, hungry thing , devouring the earth in its path. He let it run wild for a great distance, a league or more to the north and south, then forced it into remission with an effort of will and strength. It took a moment longer than it should have to control the wild forces he had set in motion, a testament to how much the journey had drained his energy. It was just as well he had chosen this route over one of combat.

The ice would stop them for a while. Until it melted, or they blasted a path through it magically. Regardless, he had gained hours if not days on them that they would be hard pressed to regain.

Yoko and Schneider were arguing. This time it was about her father. It had been one thing or another for the last two weeks, he being in a sour mood and she unequivitably not putting up with it. They sparred, they rode silently at odds, they disagreed merely to disagree and the only thing they did find to combine their antagonism towards was the weather. It had gone from simply being an inconvenience to entirely miserable. The further they rode into the foothills and the lower ranges of the western mountains the worse it got. Rain turned to light snow, which melted during the day and then froze at night to make the trails treacherous. Schneider cursed and maligned it, wasting breath on something they had no control over. Yoko rode, dripping, sodden and cold, fighting a runny nose, enduring it in silent discontent.

"It's beyond me why you defend him." Schneider was saying with that overtly superior tone in his voice that made her want to smack him. "He promised you in marriage to Angelo, if I remember correctly. That alone should be enough for you to want to sever ties, if not a limb or two."

"He didn't do it to hurt me. He didn't know what Angelo was. Maybe he still doesn't know. He was just trying to protect me."

"He's always been underhanded about it."

"Oh, you just say that because he got the upper hand on you and you can't stand the thought of anyone doing that."

"That's not true. Did he or did he not use you -- unbeknownst to you -- to try and control me?"

"He was desperate. You weren't exactly on his friendly list back then."

"I am now?"

"He tried to help you -- which you so conveniently forget, when you were in that dungeon."

"How?"

"He did what he could, trying to keep them from burning you. He tried to convince you to act rationally and make amends so they would let you go, but noooo, you would have nothing of it."

"Let me enlighten you on the facts, Yoko. First. Angelo would have burned the lot of his parishioners before he let me burn and second, I could have begged for baptism in the holy fire and he wouldn't have let me go. And your father was a blind, favor seeking ass, to even consider a marriage."

"He wanted to see me safe and protected."

"He wanted favor with the new power."

"You are so wrong. Maybe Angelo really impressed him with his suit. Maybe he thought he would take care of me."

"Angelo wanted you for one reason and one reason only. To get at me."

"Oooohh, you are so conceited. He was courting me before you even came back from the dead and he was a perfect gentleman about it."

"Oh, so now you're defending him? Did you like his smarmy attentions?"

"No, but that's not the point."

"What is?"

She opened her mouth, searching for that illusive element that had started the debate in the first place. "Well -- it seems to have disappeared, but I'll find it, if you give me a second."

He lifted a brow. She half smiled, hiding it behind her dripping hood. "Would you be jealous?"

"What?" He sounded incredulous.

"If I had liked his courtship?"

"I'd be sick." He snapped.

"Oh." Her smile widened.

They rode for a while without talking, only the sounds of the horses and the patter of rain on the leaves breaking the silence. Her fingers, buried in the pockets of her tunic, under the cloak, turned the acorn over and over. It was pleasantly warm to the touch. A sensation that she only gradually became aware of. She took it out, stared at it in the palm of her hand, but it seemed no different than any other acorn one might find on the forest floor.

"Are we in Saldorn yet?"

"How in hell should I know?"

"I think we are. Or we're close."

He turned to look at her, brows drawn in question. She held up the acorn and shrugged.

"It's getting warm. I've --- I've the feeling we're going the right way."

He stared at her or the acorn a moment longer before tuning back around, but the hostility had passed and his face was thoughtful. Goddess, please, please let them be close.

Where a forest had once stood there was nothing but mud and the severed stumps of trees beyond count. The devastation it seemed, went on forever. Kall-Su and his men picked their way through, passing a sapling here and there that had escaped the fate of its brethren. The underbrush, shadow loving stuff that was, had died back, exposed too long to direct sunlight. None of them spoke as they passed through it, for words seemed immoral and out of place in the midst of such death.

The rain had ceased, and the sun valiantly tried to force its way past swift moving clouds. Clothes began to dry. They came upon a rustic, barricaded town in the midst of the cleared land. Around it were rows upon rows of newly planted saplings. They rode between the rows, and the few men that tended the fields looked up at their passing.

How very, very odd, to destroy a forest and then plant it anew. It seemed enough of an inconsistency that he felt compelled to stop and inquire what flight of fancy had infected the men hereabouts.

"Thrax has gone mad." Grumbled the man inside the barricade who waved them to a common trough where they could water their horses. "He sees spirits in the forest. But, it's his money. If he wants to pay us to plant trees, then so be it."

They paid a man to fetch grain for the horses. A party of men came down the central street to observe the strangers in their town, the town's master among them. The man gushed. The man remarked on the fine horses. He went on about the planting and the forest, talking nonsense. Kall blocked him out. His lieutenant made some perfunctory answer. There was an old woman who had come out of her tent to watch the strangers. She wore charms about her neck and had runes sewn into her shawl. Her old eyes were intense, staring at Kall as if he had sprouted horns. Her lips formed a silent sentence and her hands went shakily to her breast. She looked as if she were about to faint from shock.

He glanced back to his lieutenant who was bargaining for supplies with the lord of this odd little town, then stepped carefully around the mud puddles and towards the old woman. Her eyes widened, and she took a step backward as if she were about to flee inside her tent.

"Wait." He said, holding up a hand and she froze like a rabbit under the gaze of a fox. She bowed her old head in respect.

"Why do you stare so?" he asked. Sometimes seers of great potency could be found practicing their talents in such backwater settlements at this. He had an interest in prophesy.

"I know you, great lord." She whispered.

"Do you?"

"When I was a young woman and new to my powers the city sorcerers where I lived called for all with magical talent to give aid to defend against the invaders who sought to destroy us. Dark Schneider's armies. You were there, my lord. I recall as clear as day and you haven't changed bit. What they say must be true."

But he had, he thought and didn't voice it. "What do they say?" he had to ask it, it was a impulse that he could not repel.

"That your father was an immortal demon."

He stared down at her, unblinking and she averted her eyes. "Until I saw you just now, it never occurred to me who he was. I knew I'd seen him."

"Who?"

"Dark Schneider."

"You -- saw him? Here? When?"

"Two weeks past, since he left. He's the cause of this, you know?" she said the last in a conspiratorial whisper, waving a bony hand to indicate the general area around the town.

"The planting of saplings?" Kall asked in wonder and half laughed at the incongruity of it. Schneider was most certainly not known for his delving into environmental restoration. "Amazing. Do you know where he went?"

"The girl he was with was asking after a place called Saldorn. He looked at maps in Thrax's house. That's what I heard."

"Saldorn?"

"Never heard of it myself." The old woman admitted. "Though they took supplies for mountain travel. Due west they went."

Due west. He whirled, marched back to his men and waved them into motion. They mounted with hardly a word to the men who had been talking with them by the well. Wide eyed, the loggers turned planters watched them ride out.

"Larz let him go. And now the Ice Lord travels on Schneider's heels." The Prophet stood looking into the darkness of a cloud covered night. His robes fluttered about him gently in a breeze that hinted at more rain. Sinakha stood behind him, silent witness to his master's musing. Impenetrable guard at his master's back.

"Gara and the woman have crossed the South Alderon River and make quicker time than Larz's army. They will be at his back before he reaches the western mountains."

"An army can not move in those mountains." Sinakha said quietly.

"No. And I'll have lost both Schneider and Kall-Su by the time they reach the foothills."

"Can the Ice Lord break your wards, my lord?"

The Prophet shrugged. "Perhaps. Perhaps not. They are not things fully responsive to magic workings, which is what makes them so useful. I would prefer if he did not have the chance to find out. He needs to be slowed down."

Thoughtfully the Prophet toyed with the holy emblem at his breast. Schneider was only a vague, fluttering presence in the eather, hard to track at best. But Kall-Su was easy to locate, radiating power. The woman was the same, but further away. Her, he could track, though Gara was invisible to his arcane senses.

Six days past they had crossed the Ahrend River and moved steadily southward on a parallel course with Larz's army. At best they were two days behind Kall-Su and he was almost at the foothills of the western mountains. What Schneider's goal was in those mountains, the Prophet could only guess at. There were things in that range that held great meaning to the Prophet personally, but he could see no way Schneider or any of his would know of them. Not yet, at any rate.

"Tell the men that I go alone to meditate." He finally smiled back at Sinakha. "Keep them well clear."

His captain inclined his head. "Of course, your holiness. I shall see to it."

And Sinakha would. He trusted Sinakha with a great many precious and sacred things. Sinakha's only goal in life was to serve the Prophet and he did it well.

Angelo walked into the darkness, putting a cluster of pine between himself and the encampment. He walked until the earth felt right beneath his feet. Solid and deep with veins of rock running through the dirt. He uttered a word of summoning and put power behind it. The air remained still and heavy, but he felt a faint twinge of response from the earth. He curled his fingers and chanted an archaic mantra. Something buckled under the earth. The pines trembled. In the distant darkness the crust of the earth swelled, as if some great serpent forced its way just beneath the surface, traveling in a fast, straight line towards the Prophet.

And just before it reached him, it burst upwards, a rearing, dark slab of rock and dirt and clay that shifted and changed as it moved, towering twenty feet above his head.

"_Canambra ._" He hissed the name of the thing, names being all powerful in the right hands. For a moment it writhed, fighting his dominance over it, an ancient, powerful thing that was not well used to being woken from its earthy slumber. But it had known his mastery before and was wise enough in its age, not to rebel uselessly. It subsided, and the earth creaked with its motion. As if from the depths of the world, its voice rumbled out.

_"What is thy wish, master?"_

The Prophet folded his hands. "There are men riding to the mountains in the west that I wish delayed. I shall show you where."

_"I shall crush them, master."_

"I don't believe you will. Sorcerous power is among them. You will find it not so easy a task, but all I need is delay."

_"The mountains run deep, master. The power of rock and earth is strong there. I shall do as you bid."_

"I know you shall. Even to your demise, if that be the case, Canambra."

The great, craggy head bowed. Bits and pieces of earth showered the ground. An elemental, properly bound, had no will but its masters, only the slyest and most powerful of them could break the bonds that chained them once properly called. Though an earth elemental was powerful beyond belief, it was slow of wit and not likely to conceive of misconduct. Fire and air elementals were much more difficult to work with.

"Go." He commanded it, and it sank into the earth, leaving bits of itself on the cracked ground where it had risen. The dirt and stone swallowed it with hardly more a trace than that. Angelo turned and strolled back to camp, much satisfied with this nights deeds.

"It's vibrating." Yoko said softly, reverently as she cupped the acorn in her palms. Her eyes were large and bright, entirely engrossed in looking at the damned, annoying thing. Schneider wasn't getting anything from it. He did not entirely doubt that she was, but she might have been convincing herself that it was more than it actually was in her great desire believe Glyncara had not lied. On the other hand, it might not be responding to him because he was so adamantly against it. He was very much aware of how fickle certain types of magic could be. Some of them were down right elusive if one did not want them bad enough.

"Again?" he asked, exasperated. It had been giving her little nudges and signals for the last week. They had been riding through the mountains in intermittent rain aimlessly during that time. He hated the woods. He had come to that conclusion. He loved cities. He wanted dearly to be in a nice, comfortable city somewhere -- anywhere, with no trees in sight. Keladedra on the West coast was a wonderful sea port city. He had conquered it maybe two hundred years ago, when he'd been on the world domination kick. The people had been so accommodating that they'd showered the invading forces with flowers. Subsequently he hadn't let his men run amuck raping and pillaging. Who needed to in a city where the women were so accommodating and the populace so willing to please. Yes, Keladedra would be a wonderful place to be, in one of the great villas over looking the sea.

"I wish you could feel it." She said softly, her voice a little shaky, as if the feeling were more than a little pleasurable. "It's so peaceful and all encompassing. Everything is so clear."

She sounded enthralled. She sighed happily and offered it to him. "Hold it and try, Rushie."

He took it and felt nothing. Just a hard little nut. Yoko's smile was still in place. He drew his brows warily.

"Do you still feel it? When you don't have the thing in your hand?"

She nodded. "It's like--- euphoria. I can't explain it."

"How long exactly have you felt this strongly?"

"I don't know. This morning."

He looked around him, at the rays of light piercing the pine canopy, at the moss and the flowering vines that wound about the trunks of trees. The sound of bird call was a symphony of chirps and whistles in the air. The smell of honey suckle and pollen was a fragrant sweetness.

It wasn't the nut, he thought. It was the place. The valley they passed through, nestled between the protective slopes of two mountains. A valley that Yoko through her insistent attention to the acorn had led them to, in a roundabout, winding course. He thought about what Glyncara had said. The acorn was a guide and a gift. And Glyncara had summoned Yoko because she was more reasonable -- or more receptive to whatever power lay hidden in this vale. It had called to her because she believed. Because she was pure of spirit and some of the age old, fey powers -- the things that were around before true civilization ever came to men -- responded to purity.

He leaned across the space dividing them and caught her arm, pressing the acorn back into her hand. "Find the center of this place, Yoko. Find the source of all those things you feel."

"But its all around us." She protested.

"No. There has got to be a focal point. A hub. Concentrate and find it. Let the acorn lead you if need be." An excitement built. In his awareness of the existence of the magic, traces of it became clear to him. There was _something_ here.

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   [1]: aftermath23.htm



	23. Chapter 23

aftermath23

**Twenty-three**

They walked the horses through a particularly rock strewn stretch of forested slope. A tiny stream ran past them, its bubbling song competing with the crickets that were awakening with evening. Yoko carried a handful of black berries she had picked a ways back, savoring the flavor, which like everything else in this valley was more intense than she could ever recall tasting. The world was filled with so much color and sensation that her head sometimes swam with faintness and she had to close her eyes until the dizziness went away. And Rushie didn't feel it. Oh, he admitted to the awareness of something more than the norm in this vale, but he in no way experienced the world of late as strongly as she did. She pitied him that inability. It was so wonderful. So entirely fulfilling to experience the world in such glory.

"Should we stop for camp?" she asked, when the ground beneath their feet became hard to see and she stumbled now and then over roots and rocks that were hidden from sight.

He did not wish to, that was clear. He stood staring into the evening, as if its hidden secrets were just around the next bend. His one hand rubbed absently at the bracelets about the wrist of the other.

"The horses are done for." She said, feeling their weariness and their single minded desire for the grain they could smell in the saddle bags. Her own stomach grumbled uneasily. Berries and jerky were not the best combination, but it was all they had eaten during the day.

"All right." He said finally. "Here's as good a place as any."

Yoko sighed and swung her head to look for a good place to picket the horses. A wave of dizziness assaulted her. Her legs trembled and she grasped at the thick neck of her horse. She swallowed bile and squeezed her eyes shut.

"Yoko?" She felt his presence behind her.

"I'm okay." She said. "I'm okay. This is just a little too much intense nature, I think, for a city girl." She tried to laugh and it came out shaky and tinged with a sour flavor. She fought the dizziness away and looked up at him, smiling weakly. He frowned at her, took her horse from her and led both animals to the brook where they could drink.

"Maybe we're getting close." She said. "Maybe that's what it is. Everything just feels stronger."

He looked at her wordlessly, hair pale in the faint light that breached the forest veil. She wished she knew what he was thinking, but Schneider was ever so much harder to read than Rushie. And he had not been Rushie -- the boy she had grown up with -- for so very long a time.

"It'll be all right." She said in a small voice, because she thought he was worried and she felt quivery and uncertain inside and needed to voice that opinion for the both of them. She wondered what Father was doing. If he was worried for her, or cursing her name. How long had it been since she had left home? Two months almost. Three weeks at least since they had left the logging camp in search of mother. Three weeks during which Schneider's moods had dipped to deepest melancholy to flighty irritation to small bouts of belief that there was something indeed that the little acorn drew them towards.

He built a fire and they heated water for tea. He offered her a strip of jerky and she waved it away, not willing to risk further quarreling with the blackberries. She sipped the tea, holding the tin cup in both hands and basking in the feeling of warmth. He sat beside her and she leaned against him, listening to the night sounds and watching the crackling dance of the fire.

"What will you do when the wards are gone?" she asked. It was the first time she had broached the question, too afraid perhaps of what his answer might be.

"Find Angelo." He said softly.

"Revenge." She whispered against his shoulder.

"Don't you think he deserves it?"

"I suppose. The king and Father will try and protect him."

"Then they'll die as will anyone else who sides with that snake."

"All the dragon guard will and all the men of Meta-Rikan."

"They're all fools."

"Maybe, but a fair number of them are good men. Friends. I -- I wouldn't want them killed just to satisfy a need for blood."

He didn't respond, but she felt his muscles tighten. He was angry. She ducked her head and said. "Linden died by Angelo's hand or his order, but if he hadn't he would have fought at the king's order to protect him. Even though I despise the Prophet for that, until Larz can see his true colors, he'll fight for him. They all will. They shouldn't die for misplaced loyalty."

"I will find Angelo and I will make him pay. If they stay out of my way, then I have no quarrel with them."

It was something. She nodded slightly and murmured. "Okay."

He put an arm about her, pulled her closer and she nestled against him wordlessly, grateful for the warmth and the comfort.

The horses rustled in the leaves. The brook babbled idiotically and somewhere far off, the land trembled faintly as rock and earth shifted.

With morning came rain. Kall-Su began to detest his own summoning which had dumped this string of foul weather on the south. In the gray distance the foothills of the Western range broke the line of the horizon. Beyond those were the mist obscured peaks of the mountains themselves. Not as treacherous a range as the snow covered ridges of the north, but a wider and longer running chain of mountains to be sure.

Breakfast was cold and unappealing. His men were dour and miserable, huddled in their cloaks and forgoing their usual quiet conversation among themselves. The horses were unequivocally displeased with the entire situation. Their legs and underbellies were coated with mud and it had been too long since they had gotten proper rest. Kall hated to treat them so, but war was war. And this verged on just that.

The pace was a plodding walk and both horses and riders rode with head down, turning faces from the rain. The ground sloped upward towards noon, the first of the foothills. Water lay in the valleys between them a foot or more deep. In the distance a herd of huddled deer lifted their delicate heads at the sight of human riders and warily moved up slope towards the line of pine that separated the last of the foot hills from the first of upwelling of true mountains.

There seemed an easily passable trail to the south and they headed towards that. It was a steep enough slope, littered with rocky outcroppings and stray pines. Narrow streams of water ran down the slope, cutting furrows into the earth. The trail followed a zig zag pattern up the hill, the top of which was obscured in rain and fog. It was a slow climb, careful as they were to find solid footing for the horses. There was a rumble not far off. Thunder perhaps.

"My lord." One of his men called and pointed. The trees above and behind them seemed to shift. Mud slide, he thought anxiously. Not surprising considering the amount of rain dumped upon these mountains. He started to urge his horse to a quicker pace and leave the dangerous area behind and rather suddenly the ground under the animal's hooves heaved upwards. The world tilted and gray sky was blocked out by an eruption of dark earth and stone that towered overhead like a solid, heavy wave of water. Horses screamed. Men cried out. His own went down in a tangle of limbs and Kall was so shocked by the earth's errant behavior that all he could think to do was scramble to escape being crushed as his mount tumbled down the slope in a rush of dirt and mud and crushing stone.

He hit the ground and there was no stability, no chance to gain balance or footing in the current of earth that swept them all down slope. Something hit his shoulder hard and he thought it might have been his horse. It hurt bad enough to trigger defenses and he called up a shield a fraction of a breath before a slab of mountain thirty feet long and half that wide slammed down on his head.

It jarred badly. He cried out. The shield held, though Kall felt it pressed back into the earth and mud and himself with it. There was nothing but darkness overhead and tons of rock. Panic at being tamped into the ground, surrounded by utter blackness sprang up and with it a frantic wellspring of power. He spat out the words of a spell, gathered the energy from the center of his being where it resided and released it. The earth exploded outwards. Shards of rock and dirt flew high into the air, pelting the slope for hundreds of yards in all directions.

Mud covered and furious he clawed his way to his feet, slipped as mud kept rolling down. Impossible to keep his feet. He took to the air, escaping the slide and something came at him out of the rain. An arm of rock and dirt that grew out of the slide as if it were alive. He was prepared this time.

_"Vash Nabar!!"_ He hissed and the fist of earth shattered. Bits of it bounced off his shield. He threw out his senses for the culprit. There. Something heavy and ponderous that moved as a part of the vein of rock and earth itself. An elemental. An earth elemental. It surprised him. Earth elementals were not easily tamed. He could not name a wizard off hand who had the skill or the vocation to master them. Someone obviously had, since it was unheard of for an elemental of any kind to go about attacking passing humans. It knew he was here. It was aware of him personally, which meant it had been set on him specifically. Which meant Larz had some unknown and powerful wizard in his employ.

How did one go about destroying an earth elemental? Never having fought one, he was not quite certain. Fighting one on a mountain side seemed a particularly odious task. If he stayed to the air, it was relatively helpless against him.

Then a strangled cry from below reminded Kall that he was not the only one at risk. There were men of his caught in that eruption of mud. A man struggled of the mud, up to his waist in it. The earth rolled towards him like a slow undulating fist. Kall swept down, landed in the oozing ground, whispered a word and froze the wave solid.

"Find the others." He cried, hauling the man out. He began searching for them arcanely, looking for the spark of life under the onslaught of dirt and rock. Found a horse and man and blasted the dirt away from them. The horse staggered downslope, dazed and stumbling. Then men were much the same, but they stayed to find their fellows.

The roll of earth Kall had frozen trembled. The ice splintered and cracked and flaked away as the power of the rock under it became overwhelming. Something rose up out of the earth, glazed with ice of Kall's making that had shape and form somewhat more distinctive than the slabs of blunt earth that had been thrown at him so far. The elemental itself, that had taken dubious human form, as elementals tended that had been called forth by man. It was no minor summoning. He could feel the depth of power residing within it, the utter age of the thing.

"Get away." He hissed at the ragged, mud coated men around him. "Down the slope."

"But, my lord --" his battered and bloody lieutenant cried, terrified of the thing towering over them, loath to leave Kall-Su. There were eleven of them out of the mud and some seven or eight horses. The other forms buried under the earth held no spark of life that Kall could sense.

"Go."

They went, ever obedient to his orders, even if it plagued their sense of honor.

The elemental did not hinder the retreat. It stood like a finger of solid rock, unmoving, unmovable, its massive arms held out from its sides like stumps.

"Who summoned you?" Kall asked softly. There were four dead men under the earth. His rage built. The thing about elementals was that if you could strike them down when they were in physical form, you could beat them, but once they dissolved into air, fire, water or earth, they were hell to get at.

It did not answer. It swayed and with a shower of dirt and broken ice, one arm swung down upon him. He brought up the shield and a fist the size of a small wagon rebounded off. Not a living thing as living things went. No blood and flesh to turn to ice. It had to be shattered then, and even then, the pieces might reform.

He chanted the words to a spell quickly under his breath, then shouted out the last word and threw his arms forward. Explosive power shimmered in the air around him. He found the core of the elemental, the center of it's solid form and focused the energy at that point, released it with an inarticulate cry. The mountain side shook. Kall, shield or no, was forced backwards by the exhalation of destructive energy. He skidded down slope some twenty feet. The Elemental shuddered. Cracks appeared in its rocky hide. One arm shattered at the shoulder and dropped off, rolling down the hill. The chest exploded outwards, a thousand shards pelting Kall's shield, piercing the crust of earth and mud on the slope. The ground split. One jagged line appearing northward, a second traveling down the slope almost beneath Kall-Su's feet. Oozing mud filled the indent almost immediately.

Silence. He cast out his senses searching for traces of the thing. There was nothing that caught his notice. He let the shield down and took to the air, letting the rain wash away the filth of the mudslide. He hovered above where the elemental had stood and there was nothing but rubble covered with slow moving mud. The water from upslope ran in turrets down the mountainside, bringing more dirt and debris with it. The trail, for as far as he could see in the dismal light of dusk and storm, was obliterated. Had it been only him, he could have continued. Could have merely levitated over the worst of it, horse and all, but he hadn't the resources left to him to take his men that route and he would not abandon them. Not with Larz on his trail.

He returned to the foot of the mountain where they waited. A ragged, wounded lot, who looked at him with great relief when he sat foot on ground in their midst. The horses stood trembling, with heads down in exhaustion and shock. All of them were covered in mud and blood.

"Is it dead, my lord?" Someone asked.

"Perhaps." He answered quietly.

"Should we go and look for the others?" A more hesitant quarry. Kall looked up the slope into the shadows, shut his eyes for a moment, blaming himself for not reacting quickly enough to save men that had depended upon him. Too long out of practice; the thing had taken him completely off his guard.

"No. They're gone."

"But, Lord Kall-Su ---"

"I said no." It was not safe for men or horse to climb that slope. Not until the rain let up and the mountains stopped pouring all the gathered waters down their slopes.

His horse was among the surviving animals. He was ridiculously grateful for that. It butted its nose wearily against his chest when he went to inspect it for injury.

"What shall we do?" His lieutenant, the man's name was Chanto, asked in a subdued voice.

"Find shelter for the night." He scanned the hills behind them. There was an outcropping of rock that sat at an angle off the side a hill that would shield them from some of the rain. It was big enough to squeeze men and horses under its protecting bluff. They walked the horses, save for one man who was unconscious and had to be draped over his saddle. Kall almost hesitated in stepping under the lee of the rock, the memory of the slab of earth that had crashed down upon him vivid in his mind. He cast every awareness he had of arcane stirrings to the area around them. And nothing came back to him. Only the still, resonance of the earth and that he found distrust in, not knowing all the predilections of earth elementals.

With the worst of the wounded, he did what he could, then sat with his cloak wrapped about him and senses stretched taught, listening for the strain of arcane rustling that would hint something foul was afoot.

There were flowers blooming in the last weeks of autumn that Yoko informed him, should not have been. There was a great deal amiss with this warm, rain free vale. It was quite the perfect place. And that much perfection worried him. Yoko woke before he did, and he rolled over to find her walking down the bank of the little stream, humming to herself in a vaguely disoriented manner. The way this place effected her made him nervous. He knew well the influences of strong magics could have upon an unprepared mind and spirit. Yoko was naive. She was trusting. She was an easy victim for a thing that seemed too good and might very well hide a dark nature. He of all people knew how easy it was to corrupt a guileless soul.

He pulled on his boots hurriedly, leaving his cloak where it lay, the vale warm enough not to need it, and went after her. She moved along the thin strip of sandy earth that made up the bank, her boots leaving soft imprints. She passed under the overhanging branches of a ancient willow and stopped, staring down at the source of the brook. The roots of the willow, great gnarly things that they were, trailed into a round, dark pool. The whole of it was cocooned in twisted willow limbs and green moss.

She turned when he approached, her eyes luminous and wide.

"Are you all right?" he asked it again, because he kept doubting her answers. She stepped into him, wrapping her arms about his neck, drawing him down to kiss, which in itself was a morning ritual that could easily become addictive. She pulled back, fingers lingering in his hair.

"I love you." She said dreamily and held out the acorn. There was something else other than Yoko in the faint smile on her lips and the dreamy glitter of her eyes. Warily he took the acorn from her palm.

"What should I do with it?" he asked carefully, not certain if it were her or something else that he asked.

"Its an offering." She said. "Offer it." One of her hands fluttered towards the dark pool. He looked towards it dubiously.

"This is it? This is where I'm to find_ Mother?"_

"You won't know till you try?"

He turned to face the pool. How did one address a pool of water? He was enormously terrible at asking for the favor of others. It was so much easier merely to take what he wanted.

"Glyncara said to bring this. Here." He tossed it into the pool. It disappeared with a plop, sending ripples concentrically outward. Yoko sat down on the moss under the willow.

"I think I'll take a nap." She said, curled up and was asleep in a moment. Schneider stared at her, mouth open to complain that she'd just gotten up. Water lapped his boots. He had been standing several feet back from the edge of the pool. He looked down and found the toes of his boots at the edge of the water. He blinked at the displacement. His heart beat like a drum in his ears. He shook his head, bringing a hand to his temple. He shut his eyes for a moment and when he opened them water sloshed at his ankles.

A beat of his heart and his senses swam dizzily. Sunlight dappled the glade and he saw spots of brightness mixed with shades of darkest black. The water was up to his waist. The ends of his hair trailed on the surface.

A beat of his heart and the world faded into sudden and utter night. He was drowning in it. It filled his ears and his mouth. He breathed it in and it weighed his lungs down with ebony fluid. Pain pressed against his chest and yet he didn't struggle against it. He was weightless and heavy at the same time. In darkness and light juxtaposed.

A beat of his heart and the veins of the earth pumped in unison with his own blood. The molten core of the planet coiled and churned, pulsing out in a thousand thousand veins of lava that worked their way inexorably towards the surface. A living core to a living world, warming from within, what could never be reached by the life giving heat of the sun.

A beat of his heart and a billion nurturing roots broke through the crust of the earth, seeking nutrients from the rotting remains of their forefathers, feeding off the bones and the flesh of the billion things that had died before them. Grass, reeds, vines and trees that held the network of soil together, that covered a world and created life even as they lived off of death.

A beat of his heart and the oceans surged against one shore then the other, tearing land down and creating new land grain by grain. Unstoppable and unchangeable, where life had begun and where life was renewed, protected from the violence's that raped the land.

A beat of his heart and source of a planet's life surrounded him, invaded him, encompassed him with the staggering aura of its power. In all his thirst for power and magic he had never experienced _this._ Had never known this existed, not this concentrated aura of force that flowed through him. No single being this, but a conglomeration of a million life sources that were overwhelming. He was small and inconsequential in the midst of it. The images kept flashing through his mind, his being, and they might never have stopped, if he had been a little less sure of his place in the world. A little less certain of his worth in the scheme of things. A lesser being might have been reduced to blathering idiocy at the scope of Earth's power. For it was the earth that battered at his soul. _Mother._ How appropriate. The mother of everything mortal and physical. Only Schneider was beyond mortality. He was not certain if he had ever been a creature spawned of this physical earth. Mother, though it very well might have produced every other living soul on this planet, might not have been responsible for him.

With a force of will he pushed the images away, forced the pounding of his heart to a faint beat in the background of his awareness. He was floating in a hazy field of bright light. There was nothing of the forest of the physical world around him. All his trappings of that world were stripped from him. It tried to strip all his defenses, but he held onto them stubbornly, and eventually it let him be.

"Who are you?" he cried, though not with his voice, though he thought he knew the answer.

_Mother._ It echoed in his head, a sonorous, thumping blow to his senses.

He cringed and curled up, hands to his ears even though it came not from without, but within.

"That's not the answer I want."

It did not answer him. It pulsed, with the beating of its own slow heart. He shivered and supplied his own answer.

"You're the earth source. The planet's life energy. You feed everything."

_Yes. No._

"What does that mean?"

_We feed each other. I die the earth dies. The earth dies I die._

He thought of Glyncara and her precious forest. If it died, then so would she. This thing was of such a larger scale than that.

"You've been here forever?"

_Forever. _ It agreed. It was not much for conversation, this Mother. He was impatient, even with such a thing as Mother, to fulfill his needs.

"One of your daughters sent me here. There are wards on my person, she said you could break. I did her a favor and you I think."

No response. Merely the pulse of earthsong. Schneider seethed, but did not push, figuring that so ponderous a thing as Mother was slow in its decisions.

_They are abhorrent to magic and nature, what binds your power. _ The voice thrummed in his head.

"Technology." He uttered the blasphemous word, the word that had been banned since technology brought about the summoning of Ansasla and the end of the old world. He had thought as much. A blending of technology and bastardized magic. A cruel and deadly efficient combination that he had never personally thought to attempt. "Can you break them, or am I wasting my time?"

_Time means nothing._

"To you maybe."

_There is a price to be paid for every thing._ God, prices again.

"Can you free me of these bonds?" He would not be played a fool again.

_I can._

He took a breath, shuddering in relief. "What do you want of me?"

_Of fleshy creatures you are unique._

"I'm aware. What of it?"

_You have power that is not entirely of this realm. You are a creature of more than my earthly influence. Of you I wish blood._

"Blood?" Warily. Sudden chills ran down his spine.

_Blood of your blood. Firstborn._

He drew back in shock, in rage. The light would not let him go, it grasped him and held him firmly and waited patiently for his composure to return. "You're crazy. Insane in your old age. I make no bargains of that nature."

Of all the women he had had and there had been so many he could not begin to name or count them, he was aware of no child that had come of the unions. No seed of his had sparked life. Perhaps it was his unique nature, of his unearthly heritage. Perhaps he just hadn't wanted it badly enough. Why bother to bring a child of his into a world he had been intent on bringing destruction to? That reasoning might have influenced him centuries ago.

_With the mate of your soul, you will spawn life. Firstborn shall be mine._

Mate of his soul. The other half of his soul. She who made him more than he was. He shut his eyes, but her image flared anyway. Yoko laughing. Yoko yelling at him. Yoko defending him against all her good sense. Yoko believing in him and not letting him walk all over her as he did with practically every other living soul in the world.

"Damn you to hell." He cried. "Stop it. Why? Why a child of mine? Don't you have enough of your own?"

_Not of my own. Not of blood as powerful as yours. The time will come, when a protector is needed. A defender against that which will threaten the Source. Your blood will do._

"If you need defense, then I'll pledge to do it."

_You are not pure. You will never be pure. Your power is tainted. The protector of the Source must be of the Source and loyal only to the Source._

"No. I won't promise that."

_Then you will remain as you are._

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   [1]: aftermath24.htm



	24. Chapter 24

aftermath24

**Twenty-four**

Two men Kall-Su had sent out as scouts in the early hours of morning came back over the rise to the east at a gallop. The sun was high in the sky, though one would never know it from looking, the clouds were so thickly grouped. The mists had risen perhaps a hour past and with them had gone the rain that had kept up through the night. It only came down as a fine spray now, barely perceptible to men who had lived perpetually in it for days on end.

The men looked up from under hoods and helms, warily awaiting the approach of the riders. Kall came out from under the shelter of the overhang as the horses skidded to a halt and the scouts swung down. All it took was a look at their faces and the men knew trouble was behind them. Kall lifted his chin and tightened his lips even before they caught the breath to report.

"My Lord. The southern army rides behind us. No more than two hours away."

They must have killed themselves to make that time. Larz was desperate then to catch up with him. He would, with three lame horses and wounded men to hinder Kall's speed -- with the very earth against them.

"We go south." He said. "I won't have this unpassable mountain at our backs. Double up on the sound horses. The men not wounded can walk."

They grimly nodded at those orders, not unaware of the tactical disadvantage of this place. Slowly they put distance between them and the mud covered slope of the mountain where the earth elemental had attacked them. The mist let up entirely and some small scrap of sun peeked through the cloud cover.

"My lord," Chanto walked next to his horse. "Will they attack out of hand or will they parlay if they catch us?"

"I'm through with parlay." Kall said. "Whatever comes, they brought it on themselves."

The lieutenant nodded, face white, young enough and new enough to Kall's forces not to have seen the wars of past years. The most he had seen were skirmishes with winter bandits in the mountains. But, Kiro must have trusted him if he put him in charge of those men he sent with his lord.

Chanto looked as if he might ask another question, but he paused, attention drawn to the east. An arrow sprouted of a sudden, from his neck. He did not even cry out as he was born into the side of Kall's horse. He clutched at the saddle briefly before the startled horse shied away. Men cried out. Arrows from a copse of trees to the east sailed through the air. Kall cursed and slashed a hand diagonally before him. The lot of arrows burst to pieces in mid-air, shattered bits falling harmlessly to the ground.

"To cover. To cover." Someone was crying. There was nothing but rocky slope behind them, and they hurried for that, sending pebbles and rocks rolling down the hill in their haste to climb it. Kall stayed where he was, holding his mount under tight rein, daring the hidden archers to fire another volley at him.

They did not. From out of the cover horsemen emerged. Armored knights on heavy horse, with emblems of the church on their overtunics. Holy swords, who were not only swordsmen but knew a spattering of magic to boot. They galloped into formation in preparation of a charge. Kall cast one look over his shoulder to see that his men were up the hill and under cover, before drawing breath and summoning the power for a spell. He needed something to rent the earth between here and there, making it unpalatable for horses to cross. A Reaver spell. Messy and cumbersome, but it would do the job.

He spoke the words, felt the power gather to its climax and released it to do its damage. The ground split not twenty feet before the charging heavy horse. The earth shook and rock exploded upwards like charges had been set every ten or twenty feet. It tore the earth like a sword going through soft flesh. Horses screamed and riders frantically sought to turn them away before they tumbled into the jagged, gash in the earth. Fifteen feet wide and five deep, it ran for perhaps a thousand yards in either direction.

A knight wheeled his horse and spurred the animal down the rough slope, calling to his fellows to follow his suit. The animal clattered over loose rock and lunged up the opposite side. The holy knight cried out in victory, sword held high.

"No." Kall said simply, narrowing his eyes. The sword crusted with ice. The arm did and the man screamed. The cry was abruptly aborted as his head and neck were frozen solid, followed by the rest of his body and the body of his horse. From one step to the next and the animal stiffened, toppled over and shattered into pieces.

The men across the rift had second thoughts about following their leader.

Priests of the High God chanted and prayed under the Prophet's watchful eye. He sat on a field stool amidst them, hands steepled before his face, listening to the monotonous chant, his mind elsewhere. He felt the release of magic and knew his calvery had reached Kall-Su and foolishly tested him without the benefit of magical backup to ward them against his spells. Fine. If they died, it was a useful enough distraction to keep him busy until Larz main force could catch up with him. Martyrs in the name of a higher purpose.

He rose and the priests faltered in their mantra. He waved them to continue and walked out of their circle. Sinakha became a shadow on his heels. It was time that he went to a place where he might better oversee this battle. It was time that the Prophet used the powers he had gained in the name of the high God to His benefit.

"Canambra." He whispered and felt the faint stirring of life force. The elemental was alive still, but wounded. It wanted nothing more than to hibernate in the cold, dark earth. The Prophet would not allow that. He did not need it to come to him to direct it.

"They're still alive. The men at the mountain. Go south and find them."

There was sluggish acceptance of his words. The elemental shifted into motion, groaning in its agony as it did. Angelo lifted his thin nose in satisfaction, the pain of a godless, soulless creature bent to his will was the sweetest bounty of all. Now all he needed was to snare a wizard or two to make his beatitude complete.

Chanto's blood was on his leg and his saddle. Cold anger seethed inside him. He took it out on the holy sword that dared to attack him and his. He called an ice elemental that was particularly gleeful in the handing out of destruction to do his bidding, setting it on the field of knights and letting it slice through them, freezing them as they ran screaming from it, then shattering them where they stood. The forest that hid the archers turned to a glade of icy spears and all the ground was covered in frost. Someone put up a shield and Kall wiped it away contemptuously.

They tried to retreat and he almost went after them, but for the sudden flaring of power behind him. The rocky face of the slope surged up, between him and his men. Shards of rock rained like hail upon his back and he barely got a shield up in time to deflect the worst of it. As it was he got hit by enough of it to hurt and pain spots danced at the edge of his vision. He hadn't the luxury of time to work a healing because the mountain side was intent on swallowing him.

It reared up like a great wave, blocking out the gray sky, and crashed down hill towards Kall. It was easier to try and avoid it, than summon a spell that might or might not dispel it. He kicked his horse into motion and the animal was more than happy to comply with a burst of frantic speed, greatly affronted with the dishonest way the earth had been acting under its hooves. The swell followed him, like some great creature glided under the surface of rock and dirt as easily as it might under water. His horse leapt awkwardly over a convulsing finger of rock that Kall hadn't even noticed. The ground was damned treacherous, and good sense said take to the air, but he balked at abandoning the faithful horse.

He was developing a distinct distaste for earth elementals. The damned things were ridiculously stubborn and hard to kill. He was tired of dealing with it, ready to use a high powered, energy draining spell to banish it once an for all. He wheeled his horse about, riding almost to the rift he had made in the field, trying to give himself enough distance to summon the spell before the thing was upon him. He spoke the words quickly, intensely, the ritual bidding punctuating the gathering forces that swirled around him.

It came up out of the earth before him, a ragged rendition of the elemental he had faced before, scarred from his prior attentions and all the more deadly looking from the jagged protrusions and gaping chunks missing from its earthy hide.

The air coalesced around it, turning hazy and thick. There was a sound, like the tinkling of glass, only deeper and more resonant, that quickly grew to a screeching crescendo. Of a sudden, it was like a thousand panes of glass had shattered. The air itself turned into shards of razor edged death. Spears the width of a finger and the thickness of a horse came from every direction, an inverted sphere that pierced the slab of moving earth a thousand times. That kept coming, forming out of the air and the very moisture of the earth itself. It writhed. Ice shattered on the ground about it. Pieces of itself fell with them. And it didn't stop. The cocoon of death around it grew, expanding as it sucked moisture out of the air to feed itself. Kall had to move away, the outer edges of it threatening even the spell caster. Anything it touched it would engulf. A thing of flesh, any thing of flesh no matter the size would have been long dead of it. It took more effort to destroy living earth. But it did. It broke away at the elemental until it was nothing but chips of dirt and rock on the ground, then continued to wreck the earth, creating a great crater that ate into half the mountain side before the shards of ice grew less and finally dissipated into a pool of frozen water that lay at the bottom of the pit.

Kall expelled the breath he had been holding, shuddering at the power that spell had drained out of him. He rode to the edge of the crater and stared down at it, rather satisfied with the intensity of the spell. All the rain in the air had fed it to a surprising crescendo. He heard distant shouts from his men, which he thought were celebratory, and his horse stomped skittishly, tack jangling. He looked to the north east, a darkness catching his eye. Over the hill top appeared a moving shadow that obscured the line of horizon and slowly spilled over the gentle slopes of those not too distant foothills. Larz army had arrived.

The Prophet's church ordained heavy horse had made a poor showing for themselves. His light horse he would use more carefully. The infantry was a half day behind them and beyond them the baggage and supply train had been left far in the wake. The king's army was in much the same situation. Six legions of foot soldiers left to make as quick a time as they might through soggy fields, while the not inconsiderable calvery sped ahead at the Prophet's dire urgings. Larz would have preferred not to have split his forces. Larz was canny enough general to realize that sheer numbers spread wide were an opposition that even a wizard couldn't deal with for too long of a time. There were only limited spells available to even the most powerful sorcerer and once they were employed only mundane means were left. With enough sacrifice, and enough men to make it, any battle could be won against magic. The Prophet embraced that creed. The king was not eager to employ it, but being the tactician that he was would not balk if there were no other choice.

Kall-Su was already weary. The Prophet was well aware of that, having kept a scrutinous eye to his activities. He felt the demise of Canambra, well and truly gone now, with no coming back. He felt a moments vexation over the loss of such a valuable tool. Elementals of that class were not so easy to enslave. It had taken four lifetimes to conquer that one.

He scowled blackly, out of the sight of his faithful, to whom he never showed more than serene tranquillity. The foot of his staff dug into soft earth, planted there by the pressure of his grip. He stood on a hillock half a mile from the point of conflict. Sinakha stood behind him, silent and wary, hands folded over the pommel of his greatsword which he had unsheathed before him. He saw the black ants that were Larz light horse spill over the hill, bypassing the far edge of Kall-Su's rift that had stymied the church knights. Angelo felt the faint tingling of magic in the air. A spell being cast. Mist formed on the narrow strip of land between rent earth and steep mountain slope and from it sprang forth creatures of ice. A fair sized coiled reptile that hissed frozen vapor. The horses balked, wanting nothing of such a creature.

Angelo smiled slightly and chanted the words of a spell of his own. He extended his staff and from its tip spewed fire. Sinakha had to catch the reins of their own horses, who spooked at the sudden heat and light that occupied the hill top with them. The Inferno spell left his staff, as if it had been shot from a cannon and rocketed towards the ice creature. It hit with a combustive boom of sound. The reptile screeched. Steam wafted skyward. Ice cracked and melted, dissolving into harmless water.

The Ice Lord wheeled his horse, searching for the originator of that spell both physically and magically. Angelo felt the whisper of the seeking and repelled it. He was a master of shadows and nothing earthborn or spawned of hell could pierce the vale if he chose for it not to. He imagined even Larz was wondering where that strike had come from. He would look to his priests, who were Angelo's minions and whom the Prophet would feed power to if need be to protect the secret of his own strength.

There were enough infantry men to lay siege to any city in the south slogging their way through the muddied foothills of the western mountains. Gara passed without them ever being aware of his presence. Arshes Nei swung further north, not as interested in spying out the numbers of possible enemies as making swift time without being delayed by inconsequential footsoldiers when the core of Larz forces had clearly hurried west. She was not one for subterfuge. When she had a goal she was single minded in its pursuit. And that goal at the moment was getting ahead of Larz, even if they hadn't a clue what path he followed. Gara would have preferred to slink along in the armies wake and let Larz do the detective work, then reap the benefits. Arshes wouldn't hear of it. Which made Gara remember why he had always preferred to work alone. Knights, lords and wizards were always so damned pretentious.

He felt the working of a magic great enough to prick even his dull arcane senses. Something had started. Something had definitely begun. The mountains loomed ahead, green sloped, mist covered giants. The ground underfoot was trodden and torn, passed over by many a horse. They passed another rise and a large group of horsemen appeared to the north. Arshes Nei and her men. Gara waved for his own to continue on and veered off to intersect her passage. She didn't slow. Her face under her helm was tense and focused.

"Did you feel that?" he asked.

"Kall-Su." She replied.

He blinked in surprise.

"Already? Damn, but he made good time."

"There's another power there. I can't pin it down or recognize it."

"The calvery left the infantry far behind. We'll ride right up their rear end."

"Good. Let them feel my wraith for going after Dark Schneider."

"My men do better slipping in unnoticed from the sides."

"Assassins generally do."

He didn't comment on that. He split from her, figuring that while she hit hard and fast from the rear, he and his would slip around the sides and pierce the center. There were too many of them to take by sheer force alone, which meant he had to get at the heart of the matter.

Another rise and the unsuspecting back of an army was revealed. Gara and his ninjas scattered in either direction, blending in unnoticed with horsemen who had other targets in their sights. Fire flared a quarter mile ahead, past five hundred armed riders, a dozen banners waving in the breeze and what seemed a giant trough cut through the very earth at the center of the valley that lay between hill and mountain slope. Perhaps he had another goal.

His men were down the slope and at his back against his will. Foolish, foolish men to think that their piddling numbers would make a difference if his magic could not. Kall was spooked by the spell that had so efficiently destroyed his ice creature. Not so much by the magic itself as from the way the source of it seemed non-existent. Any powerful enough wizard had a flavor to their magic. A unique and personal scent of a sort that was easy enough to identify if one had sensed it before. With this spell there had been nothing. No spoor, no trail of power to lead back to the caster. No hint that it had not come straight out of the heavens on a whim of whatever gods looked down upon this field.

He drew his sword from its saddle scabbard and felt the power of the thing pulse in his hands. He let them come, bunched in the bottle neck made of mountain and rift. There were shields protecting them. Shields of a holy sort that he could trace back to a cluster of sources in the midst of the mass of riders, further up the hill.

_Lord of the cold depths. From the heart of darkest glacier . . . _

A faint mantra to stir the already hungry soul that resided within the Ice Falchion. He sliced the blade horizontally through the air and the front ranks disintegrated, blown backwards by a force that ripped the armor from their bodies and the skin and flesh from their bones. Their shields were nothing compared to the force of the Ice Falchion. And over the bodies of the dead, the second rank spilled, faces dark and murderous under their helms at the havoc done to their comrades.

He struck again, slicing back the other way, standing with the blade extended while its destructive fury ate at the bodies of mortal man. There was an answering boom of power from across the hill to the east. A flare of light that momentarily made the dull gray of the day bright. He turned his head that way and sensed a hint of familiarity.

The Thunder Empress lived up to her repute. The crack of lightening that skimmed across the rear line of Larz's army was followed by a deafening boom of thunder. The ground shook at the resonance of it. Men across the field cried out in shock, most of them unawares that they were suddenly beset on two sides by wizardly powers.

Angelo knew. He whispered a blasphemy under his breath that he hadn't used in -- well, since Schneider's escape -- but not for several lifetimes before that. The priests were towards the rear, he felt their fear and panic as a wave of destructive energy washed towards them. Then Larz, who commanded from a vantage closer to them than to the low point of the valley, threw up a shield that protected them. He rode out, despite his general's protests to face the Thunder Empress. Fool. Angelo thought. He didn't have the strength of Geo Note's clerics to back him and Angelo himself was busy with other things. If Arshes Nei overwhelmed him, it would be entirely on his own head.

The Prophet turned his attention back to Kall-Su, who had actually managed to gain an advantage with the restricted passage the calvery had to get at him, and the power of his Great Sword backing his own magic. The longer he held them off, the more chance of that half elf bitch wrecking havoc from the rear and the two of them combining forces to wipe out all of Angelo's carefully laid plans. He stalked a few yards down the grassy slope, looked up at the black clouds that drifted over the valley. It was time for a miracle, he thought. A sign from the High God that he smiled upon their venture. It was time for the Hand of God to strike down the unclean.

_De voy, Lachesis, Tandum and Rovh. Powers that troll the gate ways between, hear my call and heed my summoning. Cleave the sacrifice of blood on blood and honor our pact. I call you to my bidding. Hand of God, strike my enemies._

He threw out his arms, his body suddenly spasming as power surged through it. Foreign energies that twined and merged with the layers and layers of stolen magics that he had collected throughout the centuries. His mouth opened and ghostly shapes streamed out of it, coiling towards the clouds. His eyes glowed bright white in their sockets. Behind him, Sinakha crouched, turning his head from the spectacle.

High above, the churning dark storm clouds parted and a light as white as sun off of newfallen snow shone through.

"Arshes." Kall-Su almost laughed the relief was so tangible. He felt the ebb and flow of her power unseen across the hill. He saw and heard the tell tale signs of it. His spirits rose at the much needed aid. Even the afternoon seemed brighter for it. A ray of light shone down upon the valley. He spared a glance skywards at parted clouds and shimmering sunlight. Light so bright it hurt the eyes to look upon that seemed to pulse behind the clouds. The air turned still and static. He felt it a moment before it hit. Put up desperate shields as it came crashing down. Heat and light and energy, so concentrated it pierced his strongest shield. Blasted into body and mind and sent him spinning into pain and numbness. He was burning and he was not cognizant to stop it. The shields faltered and went down and the light engulfed everything.

He curled into a knot and tried to block it out. Tried to force awareness back into a light and power shocked brain. He thought the power might have ripped the world apart, but he vaguely heard the cries of men not far from him, the screams of blinded horses. Concentrated on him then. So finely crafted a spell, so very very delicate in what it destroyed. Schneider couldn't have done better, at least not without taking out half the landscape with the effort. Kall was somewhat amazed that he was alive to contemplate the workings of the spell that had downed him. He blinked his eyes, and past the spots found himself face to face with the great brown equine eyes of his horse, its head level with his in the dirt. Blood ran down the aquiline nose and no breath stirred the soft nostrils.

He felt sick. His vision swam. What he with magic to sustain him had survived -- barely -- had killed his mount. He couldn't stand it, the light behind his eyes, the ringing in his ears and the inexplicable loss of a favored horse. He put an arm over his eyes and lay there, until the sound of swords clashing and men crying out in rage brought him back to harsh reality. He rose to an elbow and regretted it, head spinning dizzily. An unhorsed knight ran up the hill towards him, sword drawn back, a battle cry on his lips. Kall stared, not able to think of a single action or spell to counter the attack.

The sword swung down at his head and another crossed paths with it, striking sparks. The second sword slid under the first with the speed and grace of a striking snake and sliced open the knights belly, regardless of armor protecting it. No usual sword then. Gara squinted down at him, a shadowed silhouette in his light splotched vision.

"You might want to get up and lend a hand."

Kall blinked. Gara reached down and hauled him up. Steadied him with one hand when he swayed, vaguely disoriented.

"Where's my sword?" He looked at his hands as if he expected it to appear in them. Gara pointed to the earth some few feet away, where the Ice Falchion stuck, point down, then the Ninja Master met another charge, this one horse based and had no more time to waste while Kall's reclaimed control of his senses.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath25.htm



	25. chapter 25

aftermath25

**Twenty-five**

_Mother _ let him writhe in resentment for he knew not how long. He was helpless in the scope of her grasp, with no more notion of how free himself from this place -- in his own mind? -- in a place aside from the physical world of _Mother's_ .making? -- than he had of freeing himself from the wards Angelo had put on him. He screamed in frustration, railed in his rage at the unjustness of it all. To be in such a position. To be so -- helpless was a shame that ate at the core of his being. Angelo did this to him. Father Angelino. The oh, so benevolent snake who wore the robes of a priest and the smile of a missionary out to save the world. He wanted Angelo dead so bad the need for revenge pounded a crescendo behind his eyes. He needed to place blame and take a toll for the indignity done him to soothe his own bruised ego. And he could not do it with these damned wards on his wrists.

He clawed at them -- so close to freedom and stymied by yet one more being that wished to bend him to its will. He bent to no man's will or creature's or world's. He cried that anthem out to the eather at large and nothing responded. The silence left him feeling petulant and childish.

"Ask for something else!" He demanded. "Gods damn you, ask for something else, you bitch."

_There is nothing else of you that I need. _ There, the pulsing beat of _Mother's_ response inside his head. So reasonable. So patient. He frothed in his rage and _Mother_ .ignored him.

He drifted, wondering how long _Mother_ would keep him here. Till he agreed? Till she tired of him -- did the whole of the earth tire of anything? -- and would she then cast him out. And if she did, would she ever respond again? What if there were no other way? What if he lost this chance and no other came around. Would he play out the rest of his life powerless, having to flee Angelo's grasp -- looking to others for succor?

Oh, God, god, god. He'd rather die. He clutched at his hair in misery, squeezing his eyes shut and seeing the exact same thing he had when they had been open.

_He is there._

Schneider moved his head at that commentary. Stubbornness vying with curiosity in the battle of whether to respond to her observation or not. Curiosity won out. _Mother_ .could wait forever.

_Your enemy. _ And that was all she chose to say, even though he demanded she speak more. Oh, clever, clever _Mother,_ to bait him so. He strangled on his fury, fingers clutching at the gray bands at his wrists. Rage tears streamed down his cheeks, into his mouth and they tasted like blood.

"All right!" He cried at her. "I agree."

_Firstborn._

"I remember the deal." A hundred things crossed his mind. Ways to renege, paths of betrayal to a bargain made with something not quite corporeal.

_The vow will be honored. _ The thought pounded in his head like a fist. _The path has been chosen. Follow it._

Darkness engulfed him and shock that raced through his veins like molten fire. Something deep in his mind's eyes sparked and crackled. His body arched, his fingers grasping at nothing. Sensation filled him like wine in a ready cup. He cried out --

-- and came up gasping from the center of the pool, flinging water as he whirled looking for any sign of the doorway he had been thrust through. Wet hair streamed about his face and shoulders. His clothing clung to his body, a cold, clammy weight. He was in water up to his chest and his boots sunk into a mucky bottom. There was no light, no doorway, no sense of power so great as to fuel the life energy of all the world.

He pushed hair out of his face, and sodden strands of the stuff clung to his fingers. He shook his hand to rid it and stared at the unblemished skin of his wrist. No metal band adorned it. No scars from his own frantic attempts at removal of the wards. He turned his hand, not daring to breath in fear his vision might clear and the bands would still be there, mocking him. He brought his other hand up and it too was naked of restraint. He laughed. A low, amazed sound that did not even sound like his own. He clenched his fists and laughed louder.

_Ba Co Raven._ He cried out, and burst out of the water into the air, hovering with his arms strewn wide, water streaming off him back into the pool while he gloried in the sensation of magic streaming though his body, his soul. He did not even need to utter the words of a spell to dry himself. To rid himself of the ragged, travel worn clothing he had been forced to don and create attire more worthy of this most satisfactory occasion. He stayed with black, that being an intrinsic part of his mood at the moment, but most glorious black. Leather and shimmering silver of a most fashionable cut. A sweeping black cloak with silver inlaid dragons sprawled across its surface. Matching dragons on the backs of his gloves and silver and gem encrusted inlays in the black metal of his armored shoulder pads.

A movement at the side of the pool caught his eye. Yoko stretched and yawned, rubbing her eyes with the backs of her fists. His breath caught in his throat and for a moment the rapture of freedom sat like a leaden weight at the pit of his stomach. He landed on the little sandy strip of beach and stared, no words coming to mind to greet her with after what he had promised of the both of them to gain his freedom. She would never understand. Never. It was not in her to make such a sacrifice. She would hate him with all of her soul for making it for her. And he, for all the power he had gained back, could not summon the courage to tell her of it. Better she never knew. Better he avoided paying the price of the bargain in a way that Mother could not contest.

"Rushie?" She said sleepily. "You're all bright."

He looked away from her, clenching his jaw. The pool sat like a silent, black trap no more than a few feet away. Damn _Mother_ to hell. He spoke a word, an archaic, demonic key that brought power to his fingertips. He slashed an arm violently down at the pool. It was like a giant invisible hammer had crashed down upon it. Water exploded outwards, the earth that formed the cradle for it split and crumbled and all that was left of it was a devastated muddy pit, where a small trickle of water struggled to leak back into.

Yoko squealed and flinched back, staring at the ravaged pool, then back to him with wide, astonished eyes.

"Your power?" She cried, struggling to her feet. "You got it back. How?" She ran to him, grabbing for one of his wrists, pulling it up to examine it, then staring bright eyed, up at him. She stepped forward to throw her arms about him and he caught her arms, stopping her, stepping back from her as if he feared she might contaminate him. She would, with her infectious smile, her soft, sweet body, her very presence.

"You led me here. Don't you remember?" he asked, when she looked at him with uncertain, wary eyes. She shook her head.

"No. I can't recall. I remember riding and riding and --- things get blurry after that. We found _Mother._ I told you she existed. You have no faith. She freed you."

"Yes."

"Why'd you do that?" she waved a hand at the destruction he had wrought. He glanced that way, shadowing his eyes with lowered lashes. Wishing there were something more concrete he might take his wraith out upon.

"Are you okay?" She was catching on to his mood.

"Of course. I've got my power back."

"What -- what was _Mother_ like?"

"Like nothing. Don't worry about it."

She opened her mouth, hurt at that sharp retort and he steeled himself against the look. Some hurts were easier to take than others. Something rumbled faintly from far away. They both looked eastward. There was power in the air. A great amount of power had just been discharged. He could feel it now, where before he had been too preoccupied to notice. Spells, and a great many of them, were being cast not to far away. _Mother_ .had said "your enemy is there."

Had Angelo been this close on his heels? And the other castings. He thought he caught the flavor of Arshes Nei. She had come looking for him then. Good girl.

"What is it?" Yoko asked softly.

"Sounds like a little war going on. I think I'll join in."

He caught her about the waist and took to the air, bursting through the treetops like an avenging angle out of the mists. It was fast going, as the raven flew, as opposed to wending one's way up treacherous hard to find mountain passes. He shielded them from the wind for Yoko's sake, though he would have preferred to feel its bite against his face and its fingers in his hair. She clung to him, burying her face against his shoulder and all he could think when he looked at her was Firstborn Firstborn Firstborn. So he stopped looking at her. Tried to imagine she wasn't a solid weight at all in his arms. Then his attention was gratefully drawn elsewhere, for when he passed the tree lined top of the last mountain before the western range tuned into hilly plainland, a war was spread out before his eyes. A thousand men dotted the valley between hill and mountain. And from his vantage of high, he could see a line of more troops approaching from the east. A flare of explosion erupted from the eastern line. He felt the surge of a Tesla spell. One knew then where Arshes Nei was in all this.

He plummeted to the high slope of the mountain, where the pine trees stopped and a rocky grade began.

"Stay." He told Yoko. Letting her down. His own feet never touched ground. She stared up at him when he left her, but he refused to look back. _ Firstborn. Firstborn. Firstborn_.

He sailed over the fringes of the battle, and cried out; _Zako-Damero!_

Energy ripped out of his hands and tore a path through men and horses. There were cries from below. Men looked up, tiny, white faces. He came down among them, cape flaring about his body, hair floating like a living thing as the energy crackled around him. He called up another strike of power and slashed his arm carelessly in a semi-circle about him and cleared a path for himself. He cared nothing for these men. They were insects, pawns in a greater game. Angelo would not be among them. Angelo would be secreted somewhere that he might spin his web of destruction without giving up his true nature.

A great fist of fire fell out of the sky upon him. He looked up at it and let it fall, put a hand up a the last moment and created a buffer that diverted the flame, channeling it out into the field and the men there. Screams began. Schneider ignored them, concentrating on the path that spell had come from. It evaporated as quickly as it had come and he cursed. Tricky, tricky, Angelo to hide so well from him. Wait for another attack. Let it come and trace its origin while it was in the midst of being delivered. He would find the Prophet.

A knight on a warhorse charged at him. He tilted his head and waited, staring into the eyes behind the visor. The lance faltered, the man suddenly had another goal that seemed more significant and veered his horse roughly away. He cut a swath through the field and any that dared his path died. Power gathered, aimed at him. Not a spell he recognized. He didn't care. The spell wasn't important, it was the direction it came from.

From the south. It came, a shrieking fist of destructive power, and he was too preoccupied tracing its lineage to bother with shields. There, a silvery elusive scent that lead to a fading familiar aura. The spell hit like a comet bent on singular destruction. He knew pain and the shock of impact and finally put strength into the protection of his body. Regrowth, regrowth, regrowth, he had to focus everything into that goal as his body was battered and broken and thrown back a hundred feet into a cluster of horsemen. The residue spell ate at them, melting armor and flesh. It took more concentration than he might have thought to shake the effects of that spell. His bones ached from it despite a frantic series of healings. Impressive, nasty little spell. If it had caught him a little less powered up, it might have done more damage. As it was, his adrenaline level was at a frightening high, months of pent up power hammering to be released. It would be. At the last moment before it had hit, he had targeted where it had come from. A hill to the south was where the prophet watched. Let the Prophet watch his own death then, for Schneider was on the way to deliver it.

Of the many bodies that the Prophet had taken over the years, some had been vastly powerful, some only marginally so, some unique and taken to gain some skill or power he coveted. The slyph had been an odious, repulsive host, but Angelo had desired the one true skill that was a slyph's and a slyph's alone. They were one of those misbegotten half breed creatures that had come about after the destruction of the old world, partly human and partly something else entirely. They were things to be burned with prayers chanted about the pyre as their unwholesome flesh crisped and charred, sending its soulless body up in ashes, but for several weeks, Angelo had existed within the tainted shell, because of all the creatures great and small that lived within the world, only a slyph could open doorways to other places. Not a great deal of other places, they were not so powerful as that, but to one place, one safe haven; their burrow. Home. Being creatures timid of nature and prone to be hunted that escape route was all that had kept the species from going the route of extinction within the first century of the new world. By the third they were all gone. And only Angelo possessed the talent to open a doorway to his 'burrow'. His chosen sanctuary.

He didn't use it often. He had not the need to. But his plans were falling about him in disarray. The lords of havoc had appeared when they shouldn't have. The Ice Lord had taken up more of his energy than he would have thought possible and now -- now the greatest disaster of all had taken two of his strongest spells in stride and still stalked through the battlefield, as if the men on it were no more than ghosts, towards him.

Schneider should not have been free. Should have been powerless and yet very clearly he was not. Very clearly he was bursting to overflowing with magic. It shimmered about him in a fashion that made Angelo, in his presently weakened state, distinctly nervous. Sinakha moved to stand a few feet down the hill before him in a protective stance. As if Sinakha's sword and his dubious arcane powers would make a difference against Dark Schneider.

Larz's army was in disarray. Even with the approach of the infantry, what chance had they against Schneider and his minions? What chance indeed. He had to have time to think.

Kall-Su blocked a blow with the Ice Falchion. That blade did not usually see combat of this nature. It usually cleared the field before conflict ever got this close to its master. It was as gleeful at this violence as it was with any other. It thrummed in his hands. Another blow parried, the warrior that was intent on hacking him to bits, wildly beating at his defenses. From somewhere nearby he heard the hollow echo of power as Gara used the Murasume blade. From the corner of his eye, a line of men were cut down. His own attacker hesitated, looking that way and Kall slipped under his guard and sliced through the armor at his thighs with the Ice Falchion. Not a killing blow with any normal blade, but all it took with the Ice Falchion was the taste of flesh and it sat its icy grip upon a body. Not a pleasant experience, Kall-Su knew from first hand experience and one that no normal man could survive. The knight opened his mouth in shock even as the ice spread up his body, invading flesh and bone and organs. He was stiff as a rail before he toppled backwards into the mud.

There was a flare of explosion to the east. A Tesla spell. Arshes Nei's work. He was trying to summon the strength for a spell of his own when another strike hit the center of the field of battle. A high power energy blast that had seemed to come from above. Not Arshes. Not her flavor, though very close. He looked up, scanning the sky for the source. Then stopped dead, the sword tip drooping to the ground. He caught of glimpse black and silver, pale hair streaming about dark cloak, then a armored warhorse plowed into him from behind and he went down, steel shod hooves pummeling the earth around him. A spear tip came at his face. He cried out the first spell that came to mind and horse and rider literally exploded overtop him. Blood and flesh rained down upon him. He ignored it, scrambling to his feet, slipping in mud and blood and other grisly things. He scanned the sky but the apparition was gone. But the power still sang.

From her vantage, Yoko could see everything. The battle was a visage of horror, as any battle was. But this one was worse, for she recognized standards that fluttered on the field. She knew the combatants. And she knew the wizardly powers that cut through them. It was nightmare. Purest nightmare. And he left her here to observe it all, while he went down to deal his own brand of destruction.

She knew exactly where he was. There was a path of devastation around him. She saw when the first fire attack hit him and saw him repel it and watched dozens of men burn for the effort. She was looking for a way down the slope when the second spell came. She cried out in fear when it seemed to engulf him, but he seemed to come out of it unharmed. And then he was moving southward, cutting through the army as easily as he might wade through water. Something was south that he wanted and she thought she might know what it was. She began slipping and sliding down the rocky slope, crabwalking to the south as best she could.

Somehow she had to stop this carnage.

Schneider saw the silhouettes of two figures on the hill top. He narrowed his eyes and took to the air. Angelo stood waiting for him, leaning on his staff, face composed and peaceful. His guard captain, Sinakha stood before him, sword held at ready. Schneider sat foot on the ground and lifted a brow at the threat.

"Shall I kill him slow or fast?" he inquired, low purr of a voice.

"Not at all." Angelo replied. "I see the spawn of hell has managed to escape the bonds of righteousness."

"Oh, yes."

"Do I dare ask how?"

"The devil did it. I thought that was a given, as far as you were concerned."

"And where is my lovely fiancee?"

"Think about her when you die. Its all you'll ever see of her."

"I suppose she is -- tainted now. You do have a reputation."

Schneider snarled. He whipped out a hand. A pulse of energy knocked Sinakha off his feet and tumbled him back to land at the Prophet's staff. It should have cut him in half, but it had only dazed him, which meant he was either shielding himself or Angelo was doing it.

"Do you know what your downfall will be?" Angelo asked.

"Oh, please tell me."

"You're predictable. In your rages, in your vengeance's, in your reactions."

"Am I? Predict this." He closed his fists and gathered power about him. The grass, wet as it was smoldered around him. He chanted the words of a spell. Angelo's eyes widened.

"Oh, no. Not that." The Prophet said, just before he smirked, and a slice of light appeared behind his back, like a zipper opening on a very bright room. Angelo stepped back and Sinakha tumbled back with him and the zipper zipped closed and there was nothing of it or the prophet and his body guard left behind.

Schneider stared for a moment in astonished fury, the power crackling at his fingertips, the spell crying to be released. "Angelino." He cried. "Goddamned you, come back."

No one complied with his demand. A bit of rain began to fall. He screamed incoherently and whirled, extending his hands towards the battlefield. The energies of the forbidden spell, Holloween, sizzled forth. It barreled down the hill and cut a swath of destruction through the center of the army. He took a breath and summoned the power for another spell, wanting to see the whole of the field smoldering, lifeless bodies.

"No." Came a desperate cry as he verged on the release. Yoko stumbled up the hill, out of breath and staggering, holding her side as pain stitched it from her run. "Don't do it. Please, don't do it."

"Get out of the way." He snarled as she fell to her knees on the slope below him.

"Please, Rushie. Please. He lied to them too. Don't you understand? He lied to them too. They're honest men. Good men. They're my kinsmen and townsmen. I've friends down there."

"You have no town anymore, remember. You ran away from it. You think any of them will welcome you back?"

"I don't care." She cried up at him. "Just because they turn their backs on me or disagree with me doesn't mean I want them dead. He_ lied _ to them, too."

He aimed above her head. She climbed to her feet and stumbled towards him, caught his hands and pressed them to her breast, as though she wanted to take the burst of energy herself if it saved the lives of a thousand faceless men, most of whom she probably didn't even know. And she would too, give her life to save others. Too damned conscionable for her own good. What would she give up to save a child of her body.

Firstborn. He took a sudden step back from her, ripping his hands from her grip. He couldn't stand to face her. To see the look of pleading in her eyes and know how quickly it would turn to deepest hate. Why not kill the lot of her countrymen and have her hate him for that? At least she might be able to come to terms with his reasoning there. At least her rancor would be for a thing he did to someone else and not to her.

He brushed past her, not meeting her eyes. Took two steps then he went airborne. This would end. One way or another, this would end now.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath26.htm



	26. Chapter 26

aftermath26

**Twenty-Six**

Over a field of countless corpses, bodies mangled by magic, two armies waited. One was not much of an army. Less than a hundred ninja. Perhaps forty knights, both Arshes Nei's and Kall-Su's combined and a handful of the most powerful wizards to grace the earth.

Kall hadn't seen him come down from the hill. He'd seen the Holloween spell rip apart the central corridor of Larz's army and felt the fringes of the blast himself, but there had been chaos after that. He'd been swept up in a confusion of retreat and attack so vast that he hadn't been able to extract himself fully from it until Larz's men were half way up the hill, being hit as they ran from one side by Arshes Nei and her men and from the other by a series of spells that Kall was absolutely certain belonged to Dark Schneider.

Somehow they had regrouped; their small, rag tag force, and Kall found himself prowling the edge of the battlefield, where he and his men had made their stand for sign of the eight men of his that were missing. He wouldn't have done it if his army had numbered in the thousands, even in hundreds. He would have taken on the role as lord general and put the little inconveniences such as the loss of a few men behind him, left it to others to sort out. Somehow, when the eight missing had been the greater part of his troops and had stood by him against tremendous odds, it was different. He thought he was getting soft. And what a wonderful time for it, if Schneider had returned to the world. He would never hear the end of it.

Or perhaps he was afraid to go back to the camp they had made because he didn't want to see what death had done to Schneider this time. He did not want to look into those piercing blue eyes and see something altogether different from what he had known.

But of course, he had too. There was no putting it off. Across the field the black swell of Larz's men had settled mostly on the opposite side of the hill, but the vanguard stood watch on the crest. He watched them for a moment in the rapidly falling dusk, muddy cloak blowing about his legs. He was dirty and his side hurt where the horse had rammed him. He hadn't the energy to emend either.

They had set up three small tents, mostly for the wounded. They were all Arshes had been able to save from her baggage. There were two fires, around which clustered the survivors. He slipped in around the edges, saw Yoko with her knees pulled up to her chest, sitting in the crevice between two rocks, but she didn't notice him, her attention fixed across the fire where Schneider sat with Arshes Nei clutching his arm as if she never planned to let him go. Gara sat on Arshes' other side, nursing a canteen. He saw Kall first and lifted the container.

"Kall-Su, where've you been?"

Attention was fixed on him of a sudden. A dozen sets of eyes turned his way, but Schneider's were the ones that snared him like a rabbit. He met those eyes and stared, wishing that he had summoned the energy to get rid of the dirt and mud, instead of wondering into camp like a derelict.

"Looking for dead." Kall said quietly, a little too flustered to utter anything but the truth.

"There's a field of them out there." Schneider waved an arm, the one Arshes wasn't clinging to, toward the battlefield. "You didn't manage to overlook them, did you? You look like hell, Kall."

He should have managed the spell. He wouldn't do it now out of pride. Schneider was acting as if he'd never been gone. One might as well go along with the ploy, if one wished not to be pierced with Schneider's wit. He walked around the fire to stand behind Gara.

"They've scouts on the hill."

"I know. My men are out there watching." Gara assured him.

"Let them come. I dare them to come." Schneider said.

"They'll die for it." Arshes echoed, as ever his staunch supporter in whatever gambit he employed.

"Sit down, Kall, before you fall down." Schneider suggested, motioning the man nearest him to make room and patting the earth as he might do if he called for a dog to lay at his feet. Kall ground his teeth and sat down beside Gara. Schneider shrugged and he thought he saw a slight smile of satisfaction cross Arshes' lips. Wasn't she the purring feline, back in Schneider's arms. He looked across the fire at Yoko, but her face was half hidden in arms folded across her knees.

"So where did he go, do you know?" Gara asked, taking up a conversation that had been going on before Kall's arrival.

"I've no notion. I don't know exactly how he did it, but I would dearly love to."

"With him gone, Larz may give up and go away." Gara theorized.

"It doesn't matter one way or another. I've a few scores to settle with Larz, too."

"With his infantry arrived, he's got a pretty capable force out there."

"I thought," Arshes said. "That I told you to bring your army, Kall-Su."

The snide superiority of her tone made his hackles rise. He leaned a little forward to fix her with his icy glare. "And where is yours? Scattered to the winds while you pined away?"

She bristled, glaring back under her dark fringe of bangs. Her ears twitched, assuring him that he'd hit home. Schneider laughed, amused at their bickering. Oh, he had always played them against each other to his own benefit and amusement. Kall was very much aware of that now, even if Arshes refused to see it.

"So," Schneider said, drawing Arshes back against him. "Not even a glad you're alive? Happy to see you again?"

Kall looked down, grateful for the shadows of dusk. He had lost a glove somewhere and he absently rubbed at a spot of dirt on his hand. "I am." He admitted. "Do us all a favor and don't die again."

Schneider thought that was dreadfully amusing. He laughed and let his hand slide down under Arshes's cloak. As Kall watched, from under his lashes, he noticed Schneider's gaze kept flickering back to Yoko, as if he wanted to make certain she saw what he was doing. She was so huddled and miserable looking that it was hard to guess what she caught and what she didn't.

The talk went on into the night. Gara announced he would personally slink out into the darkness and see what mischief the southern army might be up to. Men made beds on the rocky ground, armored and armed in case they need rise quickly. Schneider led Arshes Nei into her tent and the flap closed behind them. Kall searched the fire lit darkness for Yoko, but she was gone.

She didn't understand. The pain balled in her chest like a fist trying to squeeze her heart to a pulp, it pulled the breath from her stomach and left her gasping. Nausea rose till she tasted it in the back of her throat. She couldn't understand it. Him. There had been a change -- when he had come out of that pool with power intact -- there had been a change. She had seen it in his eyes, in the way he pushed her away. What had changed, save that he had regained his power? Save that he was more now than he had been. What had she been, then, but a trusting fool, who believed him when he promised not to hurt her. When he said he loved her. But, had he said that? He had called her endearing things, called her _his love_, but had the words I love you, ever left his lips? She couldn't remember now.

She didn't understand. He had not uttered a word to her since the hilltop. She had followed him down, when the army had been pulling back, determined to try and stop further slaughter, but there had been little. The men were too busy trying to disengage. There was confusion, but not the blood and guts type. Evening had been falling. Where had the day gone? Has she slept through it?

She had tread between the bodies of men and horses. Broken blades littered the field, protruding from mud and soggy earth. She had stared at the twisted, burned faces, though she thought it better not to, searching for familiar features. Searching morbidly for men she had known. There had been a regrouping of men on this side of the field. So few men that had held off an army and that by the grace of magic only. She wondered who they were until an armored form swung down off a limping warhorse and ran towards Schneider. Arshes Nei flung her helmet aside, freeing her elvin ears and long, sweaty hair and crashed into his arms, armor and all. And he had held her, as he might any long lost friend -- and, one hated to bring up the image -- lover. It didn't occur to her that she was being purposefully snubbed until later. Until he ignored her when she tried to get a private word, turning his shoulder to her and walking away to confer with the Thunder Empress. Bending down to whisper something intimately in her ear while Yoko looked on. Pulling her close for a fondle in front of everyone as if he were showing off the fact that he could.

There had been a time when Yoko would have simmered or gotten angry or merely cursed him for being callous and thoughtless under her breath, but that had been before. Before they had shared -- themselves. Before she had realized what it was to give her body as well as her heart and truly be a woman. Now, she couldn't rage or curse, because the pain choked her to much to do anything but hurt. And when he took Arshes Nei into that tent, his arm about her waist, her hands caressing his arm and cast one look over his shoulder, eyes flickering for one quick moment on her, before he turned away -- then she wanted to die.

Blindly, she walked away from the fires and the humm of low noise from the camp. Out onto the battlefield among the dead. There was a great rift out along the center of the valley floor with dirt and rock piled jaggedly at its lip. She trailed along its edge, stumbling over uneven dirt.

"What are you doing out here in the dark?"

She kept walking in misery, not wanting company or witness to her wretchedness.

"Nothing. Leave me alone, Kall."

A witchlight hovered into life behind her, showing her the tortured ground. A body lay inches from her feet, and a broken sword edge lay jutting from dead fingers.

"Its not safe for you to walk this field at night."

"Is it during the day?" she asked sharply. "Then I can see the faces of all the friends who lay dead here. Which is worse?"

"Go back to camp, Yoko. We don't know what Larz plans? He could have archers on the prowl."

"Why are you here, then?"

He didn't answer that right away and she turned her head slightly to see where he stood behind her. The faint witch light, hovering low to the ground cast shadows over his eyes. She could not see his expression.

"I came to find you."

She laughed, on the verge of tears. "I'm fine. Just fine. I've survived this far, haven't I? What does a field of dead have to threaten me?" She looked down at the dead man at her feet. His face was twisted in pain and fear, his eyes staring blankly up at her. A young man, who had died before his time. They all had. Because of sorcerous greed and plots. Everything was a power play to wizards. Even the good ones like her father all had agendas of one sort or another. They convinced themselves that somehow, for some reason it was okay to use and hurt people.

Her stomach rebelled. Tears welled in her eyes at this one more indignity. She wiped a hand at her cheeks furiously, but the wetness wouldn't stop. Kall was staring at her, aghast and she waved a hand weakly at the corpse.

"There are so many dead. Good men of Meta-Rikan. And for what? How can the goddess let something like this happen?"

"The same as they let anything happen." He said quietly. "The little things aren't important."

"The little things?" she sobbed and hiccuped and bile rose with it. She gagged at the taste and that was all it took to have her stomach attempt to heave the rest of its contents up her throat. She spasmed, and doubled over, dropping to her knees, gagging up what little she had eaten during the day. She felt Kall hovering behind her, not knowing what to do to help her. She didn't know what to do herself. She hated the sickness and the dizziness that came with it. She had thought it was all due to the effects of the acorn drawing her to Mother, but it still persisted. Work a healing, she thought, distracted in her affliction. Find the flu that ailed her and banish it.

She concentrated her will to summon a healing, focused it on her pain and discomfort and felt of a sudden a spark of luminescence living within her. A tiny speck of life that was not her own, that coiled, mindless and sleeping at the core of her being. She cried out, banished the healing and starting backwards so violently she staggered into Kall-Su. He caught her before she could fall and frantically she ripped away from him, wanting escape from the enormity of what she had perceived.

"Let me go." She wailed, when his fingers gripped her arms and refused to let her go. She twisted, beating at his chest, kicking at his legs in desperation to flee. Flight was all she could think of. Flight away from everything here.

"What's wrong? Yoko, what's wrong with you?" He half shook her, his eyes wide and his face shocked at her mania.

"How could he?" she cried. "How could he -- and then -- then treat me like this? I hate him!! I hate him so much!!" She gave up the fight and collapsed against him, surprising him further. He didn't know whether to sit her away from him or comfort her.

"Oh. Schneider." He said. "I'm sorry."

"Why are you sorry?" she cried. "You're not pre--- he didn't lie to you. I trusted him. I thought -- it would be different. I'm such a fool." She clutched at his cloak and sobbed. "I don't know what I did? If he had only told me what I'd done. I don't understand. He was so cold. He wouldn't talk to me. What did I do wrong, Kall?"

"Sometimes he doesn't think, Yoko. Sometimes the only thing that matters is what he wants at the time. He wouldn't hurt you on purpose."

"He knows exactly what he's doing. Don't even try to lie to me about that. Don't defend him."

"I'm not."

"Yes you are. You always do. You all do and he doesn't deserve it. He's arrogant and cold and I wish -- I wish he'd never gotten his powers back."

She pushed away from him, disoriented and dazed, and he let her go. She started to hurry away, wanting distance, wanting darkness and solitude where she could pull her thoughts together.

"Yoko." Kall-Su called after her. "What you said? Are you pregnant?"

She froze, breath catching in her throat, heat beating thunderously in her chest. No, no. It could not get out. She would not _Him _ know of it and suddenly turn solicitous again, treating her like a broodmare while he romped with Arshes Nei. She turned back to face Kall-Su, her eyes huge and pleading.

"Don't tell him. Promise me you won't tell him, Kall."

He opened his mouth, the beginnings of an argument at the edge of his breath. She cut him off, desperately. "Its not yours to tell. He lost right to know when he treated me so in front of everyone. If this is the way he wants things, then so be it. Its not like a baby would make any difference in what he did. Its not like he would care."

"Yoko, you can't keep it from him. Its bound to show sooner or later."

"I'll have thought it through then. I can't if he's hounding me. Just give me time to think. Swear to me you won't tell him. Please."

He looked away, torn, took a great breath and inclined his head. "You have my word."

She sighed, could not gather the will to smile and nodded at him instead.

In the morning, a knight rode out into the field with a flag of truce tied to his lance. He sat in the middle of the field until Schneider came out of Arshes Nei's tent and stood at the edge of their small encampment, staring at the lone progenitor of parlay. His hair tangled about his face in a morning breeze blessedly free of rain or even the hint of it. He folded his arms, standing there thoughtfully, while the knight was forced to bide his time and wait for a reply.

"Send somebody out to see what he wants." He told Arshes, who had come to stand at his side. She signaled to one of her men, and that knight mounted up and trotted out into the field. They met and spoke briefly, then her knight came back, leaving the other man still waiting amidst the dead.

"King Larz wishes a parlay, my lady."

"Does he?" Schneider pushed hair out of his eyes and grinned, even as Arshes frowned. "Well, by all means go tell his man that I wouldn't miss it for the world."

He spun around, laughing when the knight had ridden off to relay that message, finding Kall-Su, who had come to stand a few yards away, and fixing him with his azure gaze.

"Kall, you'll come and Arshes. Where's Gara?"

"Skulking about the fringes of Larz's army, no doubt." Arshes supplied.

Schneider shrugged. "Find him. Someone needs to keep an eye for our own camp just in case his majesty attempts to be creative. Oh, I do believe I will enjoy this."

"I don't trust him." Arshes said sullenly and Schneider caught her about the waist and swung her around, in fine spirits.

"Does it matter? He can't best us and he knows it. All he can do is play at politics and pray to all his gods that I'm in a generous mood."

"Are you?" Kall asked coldly, remembering Yoko's anguished face from the night before. Disgusted that Schneider could be so gleefully insouciant while actions of his wounded to the core a young woman Kall-Su had come to regard highly.

"I don't know, it depends on how much he entertains me." Schneider said and clapped a hand down on Kall's shoulder. Kall stepped out from the touch, looking elsewhere when Schneider lifted a brow at the avoidance.

They armed and armored themselves, more a matter of ceremonial appearances than anything else. The three of them combined and with a night's rest were a force to give the greatest of armies nightmares. The army parted for them, escorted by six knights in full regalia to the king's pavilion. The faces of the men who watched from the ground as they rode by were somber and battlescarred. The eyes of men who had survived less from skill than from the good luck to be elsewhere when the spells had hit and well knew it.

They were let into the tent where guards stood at rigid attention. A table had been set up in the outer section, and chairs set around it. Larz sat behind it, a line of advisors behind him, generals on either side and the moral support of a trio of robed priests sternly fixing the demonspawn who walked among them with their righteous gazes.

Larz stood when they entered. Schneider walked right in, breezing past guards and aides alike, looking about the tent as if he expected to see someone who was not in attendance.

"Isn't someone missing?" he said without preamble or introduction. "Where's the Voice of God? The puppeteer who pulls your strings, Larz? Not headed for the hills, is he?"

"Blasphemer." One of the priests muttered and Larz waved a sharp hand to silence the complaints.

"It was assumed you had killed him." Larz said levelly, meeting Schneider's eyes without flinching.

"If only I had been that lucky."

"Liar." The same priest hissed and Larz turned an angry dark glare the man's way. The other two priests patted the arm of the malcontent soothingly, whispering for their fellow to keep his tongue.

"Oh, believe me," Schneider purred. "If I had, I would be crying it out for the world to hear. He skipped on you, Larz. He wasn't the man you thought him to be."

"Sit down if you will." Larz offered, trying to be reasonable. Trying to put them all at ease. He looked past Schneider for the first time, at Kall and Arshes. "Lady Nei. Lord Kall-Su, please sit."

Schneider sniffed disdainfully and plopped down in the center chair, sprawling his legs out before him negligently. "So what exactly do you have to say, Larz? You tried like hell to get me and you failed. I owe you, Larz. For what happened in Meta-Rikan. For your little pseudo trial."

"There were crimes that needed to be paid for. Justice is blind, haven't you heard that phrase? Kings, wizards or laymen can't escape her reach."

Schneider burst out in laughter, seemingly genuinely amused by that notion. The generals behind Larz stirred uneasily at the disrespect. "Are you quite insane? Not that I have to explain myself, but I feel the need to enlighten your obviously misinformed majesty of the hard facts. One. I didn't cast the spell that did the damage at the damned temple. Two. I was fucked up in a major way or you never would have taken me. Three. Are you such an incompetent wizard yourself that you forget how much concentration it takes to cast something with the complexity of an Exodus spell? Put two and two together Larz, if I was coherent enough to cast an Exodus spell then why the hell is Meta-Rikan anything but smoldering ruins now? A few measly priests couldn't have held me if their immortal souls were on burning stakes roasting over the devil's firepit."

The priest glared at him. Larz did, but it was not with quite the moral indignity as the priests managed to work into their eyes. "That remained to be proven. I would have seen you had a fair trial."

"Bullshit. You jump at the Prophet's word and the Prophet was out for more than my blood. He's a body snatching, black hearted sorcerer, Larz, who thinks he's got a direct line to god. He cast that spell. He had Linden killed. You remember Linden? One of yours, right?"

"He did not." The priest whispered in outrage. But Larz had widened his eyes momentarily, some vague horror flashing behind them before he shuttered the emotion.

"Why'd you go to so much trouble to find me, then? Did you miss me that much that you needed an army to get me back? Tell me he didn't urge you to it."

"He did." Larz admitted. "For the good of the land. You have a reputation, you know, for destruction."

Schneider smiled lazily. "Yesss. I do, don't I? I wanted to destroy your little army, you know. Bunch of mindless fools to follow my trail on the word of a hypocritical priest."

"Why didn't you?" Ah, there it was, Larz admitting that he knew he was outmatched, which surprised Kall considerably. Larz was usually more stubborn in his campaigns.

Schneider hesitated, glancing at the table top for an instant as some truer emotion than the dangerous sarcasm he had been exhibiting crossed his face. "A favor. You're alive because of a favor, that's all."

"Well, small favors save lives do that not? I have no notion of whether what you say is truth or not. The Prophet is not here to defend himself."

"It is slander, my king." The one priest cried and Schneider and Larz both looked his way, the latter with exasperation at the interruption, the former with lazy menace in his blue eyes. The priest blanched and cringed back among his colleagues.

"But, " Larz continued purposefully. "It seems as if the point is mute, considering I am not willing to risk an army to pursue it."

"Oh, my, a rational decision. What a surprise."

Larz narrowed his eyes at him. "Go your way and I shall go mine. But bear in mind, that you are not welcome in Meta-Rikan, as Tia Note Yoko is not, until this matter is resolved."

"You've got to be kidding?" Schneider was out of his chair, leaning across the table to glare at Larz. "What the hell has she to do with it? It's her home."

"She is a traitor to church, king and city. Blame yourself for that. Surely you can't place that responsibility on the Prophet."

Schneider straightened, lifting his chin. "I'll go where I want. Harm anything of mine and this little skirmish will seem like a tea party."

"I'll keep that in mind." Larz said quietly.

Schneider spun on his heel and stalked out. Arshes was right in his tracks. Kall hesitated a moment, looking back at Larz, who's face had gone from the rigid strength he used to confront Schneider to weary thoughtfulness. There was uncertainty in his face, in his dark eyes, but Kall did not think it had to do with Schneider. More for his own hierarchy of beliefs that he was just beginning to question. He looked up and at Kall, at the flap of the tent. He inclined his head and said.

"I would have let you go -- but the Prophet had a vision."

Kall nodded once, then let the flap fall behind him, walked among the company of knights to where Schneider and Arshes waited impatiently for him to mount up so they might leave.

"What was that about?" Schneider asked imperiously when they had cleared the camp and rode down the hill back across the field. "Did he say something to you?"

"It doesn't matter." After a long pause. Behind them, men from the southern army slowly moved out onto the field to collect their dead.

"That's for me to decide."

"Not everything is about you."

Schneider gave him an offended look. Arshes glared from his other side. He did not wish to be at odds with Schneider. He did not wish to feel this animosity. He wanted to blurt out Yoko's secret and hope some honest emotion crossed Schneider's face because of it. He wanted very much to see Schneider go and take responsibility for what he had wrought. But Schneider and responsibility were often at odds and his promise to Yoko forbade him speaking of it to him.

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   [1]: aftermath27.htm



	27. Chapter 27

aftermath27

**Twenty-seven**

They took their dead, her country men from the city of her birth. She sat on the slope of the mountain and watched as the bodies were wrapped in cloaks and canvas on the field and taken beyond the hill and beyond her sight. She wondered what would become of them, all those young men of Meta-Rikan. Tears made crooked streaks down her cheeks, a silent, deeply mournful regret at the loss of life -- of the loss of innocence and trust. At the life blossoming within her -- which she treasured already, after only knowing it for a day -- which she prayed would never know of the hurt and betrayal her mother felt. Would never know that such a hurt existed.

She saw him in the camp below, doing this and that, generally in the company of Arshes Nei, never once looking for her, never once bothering to tell her what had transpired at the parlay that morning. No one came and told her, not even Kall, who had been casting her worried glances all afternoon, whenever he did pass by her perch. She had to hear the rumors by eavesdropping on the conversation of the Thunder Empress's knights. She heard that Larz had banned her from home and pulled her knees close, burying her head in her arms in misery.

Gara came by and climbed almost to her perch, shading his eyes against the light of the sun spilling over the mountain top behind her.

"You've been up here all day, little girl. What are you doing?"

"Nothing. Thinking."

"Thinking, huh? No good occupation for an honest man, I say." He grinned at her, but she could tell it was strained, a expression for her benefit only. His eyes were tired, bruised from too little sleep. She had heard he had been out all the night and most of the day keeping an eye on the movement of Larz's army.

"Will they take them back to Meta-Rikan to bury?" She asked, because it was the one thing on this miserable day that mattered enough to break through her own wall of pain.

"No. Six, seven weeks on the road and they'd be little comfort for their families back home. He'll bury them here and take their swords back home for their families to honor as they will."

"Oh."

"Are you all right?"

She narrowed her eyes, wondering what he knew. Wondering if Kall-Su had let her secret slip. "Why?"

Gara started to laugh, then aborted it, looking down at the camp. "Just -- he's being an ass -- who the hell ever knows what's going through his head."

"Doesn't matter. You even told me once, that she was the only woman he'd ever really loved. That everyone else were just temporary diversions. Why should I be surprised?"

He shrugged, looking uncomfortable. "I should have remembered it myself." He said under his breath, then starting down the slope he called over his shoulder. "We're breaking camp within the hour. Get yourself something to eat, because we'll be in the saddle until well after nightfall."

They rode north. North because it took them away from hostile lands. North because Kall-Su had an army moving towards them from that direction. It seemed the best of possible routes. They had horses and remounts to spare, having gathered stray animals from the field after the battle and no one from the other side daring to come and protest.

Kall had avoided Yoko during the day, because she needed the time to think without having to rehash her dilemma to someone else. He avoided Schneider because he didn't want a fight and he was still angry at him for the treatment of Yoko. He would have talked with Gara, but the Ninja Master slept in the saddle, chin on chest, holding his seat as if he were part of the horse and Kall-Su figured he deserved the rest considering the busy night he'd had scouting the army. So he rode mostly among his few remaining men in silence.

They had started out late, and so traveled late into the evening. It was dusk when he decided he'd had enough of contemplative silences and reined his horse back to scout the line of riders for Yoko. She was near the rear of the procession, riding with her cloak tightly clutched about her, her arms folded underneath it for warmth in the chill of the evening. Her eyes shifted towards him under her dark fringe of bangs, wary and tired. She looked sick. Weak and nauseous; and he thought a day of riding was not the gentlest activity for a pregnant woman. There was little help for it.

"How are you doing?" He asked softly.

"Horrible." She groaned. Which of course was apparent without the asking, but one had to be courteous.

"So -- have you thought what you might do?"

She looked away from him, blowing air from between her teeth in exasperation. She wouldn't answer for a while and he didn't press.

"I don't know." Finally, miserably, she replied. "I don't know." She sounded so hopeless, so terribly devoid of spirit, that he clutched his reins until his knuckles turned white in useless anger at the cause of it.

"I can't go home. Larz said. He wouldn't even come and tell me himself. Nobody would. I don't know where I'm going to go. I don't know anybody outside of the south. Where am I going to have my baby? How am I going to protect it?"

"You can come to Sta-Veron." He uttered the words, knowing in his heart that they would prove heavier than he could at the moment imagine. Knowing that they would create rifts. "You have my protection."

She swung her head around to stare at him, wide eyed, frozen in uncertainty.

"I can't go there --- if -- if he's there. I can't be in the same place where he is. I won't have this child with him there to mock me with his dalliances or -- or to claim it as his own and then disregard me."

"He won't be. He's not much for the cold." He said that lightly, but his voice trembled on the last word. He looked away, wondering what deadly blunder he had made in that offer of protection, in that offer of sanctuary against Schneider. Yoko had started crying. No simple tears but streams that ran down her face and great gasping gulps of air that allowed her to do nothing but nod her head at him in acceptance. It was sealed with that nod, and no turning back.

They made camp. Fire pits were dug, under the shelter of a scattering of pine and fur. Gara went hunting with a group of his ninja and came back with a string of rabbits and a dozen quail they had stirred up from nighttime nesting. It was enough fresh meat to supplement dried rations and the smell of it was tantalizing. Yoko brought him a cup of tea, and sat down near him with her own, staring into the fire, somewhat less devastated he thought, with a safe haven provided her. They did not speak, merely sat and watched the men roasting the meat, listened to the talk around their fire. Gara came and sat down next to Yoko, hot tea in hand.

"The weather's being kind so far." He observed. "I was beginning to think the sky had sprung a leak, we were getting so much rain."

"Sorry." Kall said, sipping the bitter tea.

Gara lifted a thick brow at him. "It's not your fault."

Kall shrugged and Gara gestured with his cup across Yoko to Kall-Su. "It's not your fault, is it?"

"I might be somewhat responsible."

"Do you know how many times I laid curses at your door, then?" Gara laughed.

"I can imagine. I cursed myself for it rather poignantly."

"I believe I called you few foul names, too." Yoko said quietly, a faint smile touching her lips.

"It seemed at the time, the prudent course of action."

"What did?"

The smiles on all their faces faded. Schneider stood just beyond Kall, the glow from the fire lighting his right side, the other side lost in shadow. It made his hair orange and his eyes glow demoniacally. Yoko looked down at her tea as if it held all the secrets of the world.

"Nothing." Kall said.

"Really? Nothing is generally the course of action I'd expect of you. I want to talk with you, Kall."

"Not now. I'm busy." He said it and held his breath waiting for reaction. Schneider had never taken well to denial. Schneider took a breath, then stepped forward, towering over Kall. Kall tightened his fingers around the cup, feeling of a sudden like a child that had overstepped his bounds with a stern and disapproving parent. Schneider had the unique gift of making him feel that way with detestable ease.

"I said I wanted to talk with you."

"And wouldn't it just be horrible if you didn't get your way?" Yoko murmured, her mouth at the lip of her cup. Schneider's fingers twitched. Kall tensed, not wanting a verbal battle between them. Not with Yoko already bruised and hurting. He put his cup down, and climbed to his feet.

"Fine."

Schneider whirled on his heel and stalked away, expecting Kall to follow. He did, until they passed the last of the tents and had gone a few yards into the little grove of evergreen, then he spun and stabbed a finger in Kall's face.

"What the hell is your problem?"

Kall looked away. He did not do well in confrontations with Schneider. He braced himself and said words that would start one anyway. "You're the one with the problem."

"I'm the one with the problem? Oh, oh, please enlighten me as to what you think that problem is, Kall? You being the expert on emotional disorders."

Schneider wanted a fight. He could see it in his eyes, in the cant of his mouth. He craved conflict and Kall thought he had given him enough fuel in the last day or more of distancing himself from him to start it.

"What happened when you were dead this time to make you come back without a shred of conscience?"

"And what deplorable thing have I done to make you -- Ice Lord -- murderer of thousands -- shiver at my deeds?"

"You know what. You'd think you'd have the decency to at least talk to her after she risked her life and lost her home to help you. But, you snub her and jump straight into Arshes' bed without even a thank you."

Schneider hand shot out, a back handed slap that snapped Kall's head around. Then Schneider's fists were wrapped in the front of his cloak and he was slammed back against the ungiving bole of a pine tree.

"That is not your business. Not your concern. You do not want to cross me in this, Kall. Believe me, you do not want to cross that line." Schneider's voice shook, so full of anger or some similar emotion he was. His face was so close to Kall's that Kall could focus on nothing but those ocean blue eyes.

"You have no honor." Kall said softly. "She deserves more of you."

"Why should you care. She's not your kin."

"She's a friend." She's carrying your child, he wanted to accuse, but the vow of silence held his tongue.

"She's my business. Not yours."

"Then tend to it."

Schneider pulled him forward, still leaning close and Kall braced himself to be slammed again against the tree, but Schneider merely breathed against his ear.

"Don't think you can dictate to me, Kall." And let him go. Kall stood there, a shiver passing down his spine. Schneider passed him an arched brow, dark glare, before walking back towards the camp.

He took a shuddery breath, trying to ease the tension of that altercation, the ever present apprehension that he had alienated one of the few people in the world whose opinion mattered to him. He very much wanted Schneider's approval, he could not shake that very old habit. At the same time, perhaps for much the same reason, he had to protect the things Schneider loved, that he came to love because of it, even if Schneider cast them aside thoughtlessly. Kall was never so thoughtless in his loyalties. Those very few things that he granted his allegiance to, he put his heart in and guarded fiercely. He had to for his own salvation, when the rest of the world was against him. When all the things he had ever loved before Schneider had in the end held no loyalty to him.

He took a step towards the light of camp and she stepped out from behind the shadow of a tree to block his path. Her amber eyes sparkled with malice, and her small fists were clenched in anger.

"What do you think you're doing, Kall?"

He wasn't in the mood for Arshes Nei's petty jealousies now. "Not now, Arshes."

"No. Now." She put out a hand and shoved at his chest. He glared, willing to take it from Schneider, but not from her.

"Back off." He warned and she curled her fingers as if she were going to pounce.

"You were always jealous of how close he was to me. You always envied that." She cried. "Jealous that he liked me better than you. You push him at her so I won't have him, is that it? Well, he's made his choice."

"Eavesdropping are we? You've sunk low, Arshes."

"You've sunk lower. You don't care about her. You know he'll always come back to me. Do you envy the fact that he came to my bed and never yours?"

"Shut up, you shrew. I defend her because she has no one else and he won't take responsibility for the seed he's planted. It has nothing to do with you or your much contemplated spite. Look to the hearts you've broken yourself, woman."

She stood there, glaring, horrified speculation on her face. "What seed?" she whispered.

He hissed in disgust at his own indiscretion. He shook his head and started to brush past her. She cried a word and line of fire shot up in his path. He cursed and spun, glaring at her, at her foolishness to set a blaze in this little forest with their camp so close. He said a word of his own and ice formed over the ground, smothering the flames.

"Are you insane?"

"What seed?" She cried.

"What does it matter to you? He chose you, remember?"

"Oh no." She whispered, and he stood a moment longer, before stepping gingerly over ice covered ground and leaving her to make her own conclusions. She would either tell Schneider or not. And he rather thought not. She was not stupid enough to think he would ignore the woman who carried his child. She was possessive enough to want that attention for herself, even though she was pragmatic enough to realize she could never force the issue. She had that over Yoko. She would put up with Schneider's roving eye and always let him come back to her. Yoko would never understand it and never accept it. Perhaps it was just as well.

He took her to a place with no windows. In all her years as a slave, Lily had always had access to the sky. To its limitless boundaries and its promise that there were things in the world that could never be bound. She did not realize how much she missed it, until it was taken away from her. Until she came to this place, knowing not exactly how she had gotten here and saw only stone walls and ceilings that made up the world.

The people here were silent and humble, never speaking save for the most basic of questions or directions. They went about their duties with hardly a spark of life in their eyes, heads bowed, lips murmuring prayers to the High God, as if they thought that worthy might save their souls. Their earthly lives certainly seemed to have no flavor worth relishing. They served him. The new master. A man of God. A man of the High God, who wore religion like a fine outfit, proudly showing it off to all who looked upon him and yet underneath the robes he secretly donned the garb of corruption.

Lily knew corruption. Slaves saw the sides of men that they hid from their peers, from their constituents, but that they never bothered to shadow from someone they owned -- or rented -- or bought for a night's pleasure from another man. Lily knew the face of a man who pretended righteousness to the world all the while practicing depravities in his mind. Only her new master didn't merely fantasize about the dark side. He made it real.

He brought her here and he took pains to let her know her place in the world. He let her know how lowly she was, how tainted. And she accepted the belittlement, well used to submission. There was nothing to be gained from rebellion and much to be gained from meekness. A man like her new master, a man of power and cruelty, got more pleasure from the breaking that he did from the end result. What use to fight him, when it would all end the same anyway? Lily well knew the ways of survival. Pride was not a thing that mattered as much as broken bones and ravaged skin. She had her own brand of dignity, hidden away from all the world, but it served her well. She had her music, which had soothed all her masters.

It soothed her new one, the short while he stayed in the place without windows. Then he was gone and she was left with the silent worshippers who attended his monastery. She walked the cold halls, listened to the whispers of prayer from the chapels. Peeked into the dark, ominous cathedral with its nave dominated by a great stone symbol of the High God. Prayed herself, because He had made it clear that she must devote her thoughts to the God, when she was not devoted to him. One master was as good as the next, she thought. She no more believed in the gods than she did in guardian angels. No god would let the things happen that did in the world. And if there were higher beings somewhere who watched over the progress of man -- then they deserved no worship for they accomplished no miracles.

This was not so terrible an existence, save for the lack of sky. She had known worse. And then her new master came back. There was no fanfare. No announcement of his arrival. He was simply there one day and the silent, sad forms of his acolytes moved with a bit more alacrity to their step and bit more desperation not to be noticed by their divine master. One of them knocked a candelabra onto the floor into the master's path in frantic desperation to scamper out of his way. Lily happened to be hiding in the shadow of a stone stair and saw it. The master went into a rage. She had never seen the like. He beat the poor fellow physically, screaming curses upon his soul and then when he had exhausted himself with that, he stood over the huddled form and stared down. And the screams truly began. Blood began to pour out of ears, eyes nose and mouth. It bubbled under the exposed skin until the pustules popped and spurted fluid onto the stone floors. Lily covered her ears at the inhuman screams of agony. She backed into the shadows and hid hoping the master would stalk past her unknowing. But he stopped and stared into the shadows as though she had made some sound, or he had scented her.

"Girl. Come here." He crooked a finger at her. She shivered and crept out, head down, eyes on the floor. She bowed, as a good slave should and he put his fingers under her chin. There was blood on his hands.

"Have you kept at your devotions?"

"Yes, master." She whispered. "Every day."

"Good. Fetch your instrument. I've a need for distraction."

She nodded and ran to do his bidding. Not for the world would she deny him anything. Not after what she had just witnessed. And that had been at a whim. At a flash rage that had passed as soon as it had come upon him. She pitied anyone who gained his ire and kept it.

Schneider walked into the tent he had been sharing with Arshes Nei and stood there, one hand on the center brace, staring at nothing. Anger shook at him. Indignation did, mixed with some small degree of hurt. There were certain people in this world he valued. Whose support he expected, whom he did not anticipate would turn on him. Impudent little bastard, to try and censure him. As if he had any right. As if he had any notion of what he was talking about. As if there were not already a pit of loathing in Schneider's stomach from days of pretending to ignore Yoko's bewilderment and misery.

Stop thinking about her. Don't feel guilt. Don't feel pity. Neither one would banish the bargain he had made. Bewilderment and misery now were better than bereavement later. Guilt and pity would only make him weak. And weakness would make him take what he wanted. And when he had what he wanted and the eventual seed sprouted from the having, he'd be back to the bargain again. Full circle. So stop worrying about her feelings. Hurt them as much as possible to drive her away, because she had to be the one to go, he couldn't trust himself to do it. Not for long.

He wondered if she'd confided in Kall. Why else would he take up her crusade. It annoyed Schneider that Yoko felt that comfortable sharing such a deep hurt with Kall. It sparked jealous sentiment on the one hand, that she would go to him, and on the other that Kall would side with her against him. Regardless of bargain or vow, they were the both of them his and it irked to find them sharing confidences against him.

"Darshe."

He turned his head slightly when Arshes moved the flap to enter the tent. She hesitated on the boundary between inside and out, her hand gripping the canvas. Her eyes were huge and her ears canted low, as they did when she was in dilemma. He couldn't find the generosity to wonder what was bothering her now, his own disquiet taking all his attention. He didn't answer her, so she let the flap fall and slipped into the tent, pressing against his back, her face to his shoulder.

"What do you want?" he asked, short, because that was the mood he was in.

"I -- I -- nothing really. Just looking for you."

"Well here I am."

She ran her hands about his waist, to his stomach and he shrugged her off, stepping away, detesting intimacy of any kind at this moment. She looked hurt. He looked away sullenly.

"What's the matter?" she whispered.

"Nothing." All the world. He hated this. He hated feeling all the things that he told himself he wouldn't feel. He glared at the tent wall. Weak. Weak. He cursed himself. He could not stay here -- in the same place as Yoko was. He wasn't as good at self-castigation as Kall was. He despised it vehemently. He sat down on the low cot, elbows on knees. Arshes stood watching him uncertainly, a look of such wretchedness on her dusky face that he finally felt moved to charity. He patted the cot next to him, inviting her over. She came and sat there, hands clutching the rail of cot, eyes downcast.

"Its just a mood, little one." He told her. "Not aimed at you."

"Did -- did you have a fight with Kall-Su?"

He snorted. "Nothing for you to worry about. Nothing that matters."

"Oh. That's good, then." She said that with such distraction in her voice that he drew his brows, placing a hand to her face to make her look up at him.

"What's troubling you, Arshes? Is something amiss?"

She shook her head, wordlessly, then wrapped her arms about his neck, pressing herself close. "We should go somewhere else. There's nothing for us North. I've holdings to the east."

He rested his chin on the top of her head thoughtfully. "I was thinking about Keladedra recently. I'd like to visit the sea."

"Keladedra." She echoed. "It's been a long time. We could go there."

"Yes." He said, thinking more about what he would be leaving behind than the ocean side jewel of the West that lay in the future.

Arshes men would stay with Kall-Su and Gara until the former met up with his southward marching army, then Arshes bid them either stay with Gara or Kall or return to their own provinces until she had further need of them. Two wizards alone could move with considerably more ease and swiftness than two wizards burdened with a troop of knights and Schneider was eager to head westward. Once a decision was made he hated to waste time implementing it.

Kall stood staring at them both dourly, hurt almost, as if they were doing him some misdeed by their exodus. Schneider was not yet ready to forgive him for his censure and chose not to speak. Perhaps in a year or so, he'd find him and see if Kall were ready to offer apology. Gara offered Arshes the reins of her horse, solemn and serious. He bade he safe journey and nodded once to Schneider.

"Don't let him get you into too much trouble." The ninja master added, a smile flickering over his broad face. Arshes threw her arms about his neck and hugged him, to which Gara did not quite how to react. He ended by blushing and looking away. Schneider hardly noticed. He looked surreptitiously through the faces of knights and ninjas for one smaller, more delicate countenance and saw her not. He had thought she might be there, lurking at the edges. He had thought to get one last look at her face.

Arshes mounted up. Schneider began to, then paused, stepping close to Gara and motioning him close. The big man bent his head to listen.

"See to Yoko, will you?"

Gara stared at him a moment, brown eyes pensive, then he nodded. "Of course."

There was nothing to do then, but mount up and ride out of camp, leaving the rest of them behind, hoping that distance would make the regret less, but pragmatic enough to realize that it probably wouldn't.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath28.htm



	28. Chapter 28

aftermath28

Twenty-eight

There was snow and snow and snow. It seemed as if all the world had been swallowed by white. Yoko had never in all her life seen so much of the stuff. Even at the passage of a thousand men, it did not smear away and turn to brown earth underneath. She was lost in it, lost amidst an army who had come on the heels of its lord and she was giddy that men were able to function to efficiently in the abundance of the snow. Her horse more times than not, tread in snow past its knees. When they made camp she had no notion how they managed to clear enough of it away to pitch their tents and dig their firepits. She huddled in layers of furs and soft leathers, her feet bundled in thick boots and her hands hidden away in fur lined mittens and drifted in her own world of heartache. Kall talked to her and Gara did, but she heard only a fraction of what they said and absorbed even less. They always left her with wary, concerned expressions on their faces. 

And then after what seemed endless travel though bitingly cold whiteness, the walls of Sta-Veron broke the unchanging vista of snow. High gray walls glazed with a layer of ice and frost. Stark walls for a stark city cut out of a frigid, ungiving land. The gates opened and an army gone only briefly in the way that armies passed time, was welcomed back with enthusiasm muffled only by winter scarves and fur lined hoods. The people lined the streets and cheered for their lord, who rode with passive silence, as if he were continually amazed that they honored him so. The army dispersed, going to homes, or barracks or where ever an army went when it was no longer needed, save for her and Gara's ninjas and the core group of commanders who rode with them into the inner walled sanctum of the Ice Lord's own castle. There the noise and the crowd that had come out to greet them on the streets of the city lessened to a more controllable confusion of stableboys rushing to take charge of horses and servants scattering here and there in preparation of their lord's return. 

Someone helped her down, Gara she thought, he was so bundled against the cold, she had only a fleeting glimpse of eyes past hood and scarf. She stood within the disorder, a small, huddled figure, as lost here as she had been in all the endless snow. She was jostled by man and horse, so she retreated to the edge of the thick stone steps leading up to the castle. She leaned there, arms wrapped about herself until a gruff female voice from above demanded attention.

"You there. Why are you dallying. Don't you have work to do?" 

Yoko swung around, staring up at a thick, red faced woman of middle years who seemed to be looking over the activity in the yard. Yoko opened her mouth, not quite knowing what to say, and the woman narrowed her eyes at her and stabbed a finger down at her.

"You're not one of mine. Did you come with his lordship?"

Yoko barely nodded, teeth chattering, when the woman stomped down the steps, descending upon her like a wrathful banshee. She almost cowered, but the big, rawboned hands merely took her under the elbow and steered her up the steps towards the thick wooden doors.

"Never trust a gaggle of men to do anything right." The woman was complaining. "Leavin' you out in the cold like that, when there's a perfectly good fire blazing inside. What's your name, girl?"

"Yoko." She stammered.

"Yoko, humm?"

"Tia Note Yoko, ma'am."

"Ma'am!" The woman snorted indelicately, as blustery as the winter that waited outside the gates. "I'm no Ma'am, at least not to guests of my lord. Keitlan is my name. I look after his lordship's domestic staff and see to his household."

She looked pointedly at Yoko, as if expecting as concise a description of what station Yoko occupied as in regards to her lord. 

"He -- he invited me here." She said quietly. "I'm a -- a friend."

The woman looked mildly dubious. As if she either doubted the invitation or the claim that Kall-Su had friends. They entered a high ceilinged main hall. Tall windows let light in along both sides, though the illumination was stark and chill against cold gray stone with no adornment. Wooden tables and plank benches lined the walls near the far end where a great hearth dominated the greater part of the wall. A draft insidiously snaked through the hall, causing chill even with the roaring flames of the fire. A plain, well constructed hall, made to house a great number of men if need be. But barren and stark and cold, much like the face its master showed to the world. There were doors along the walls and on either side of the hearth, leading deeper into the castle. Yoko somehow doubted it got warmer or more welcoming, if the great hall, the facade all castles showed to the world, was a harsh as it were. 

Keitlan steered her towards the fire and the tables near it. 

"Setha, you lazy girl. We've people to see to." The housekeeper called loudly and Yoko winced at the volume. The lazy girl in question appeared from one of the doors at the hearth and hustled forward, eyes alight with curiosity at the woman in the company of her superior. 

"Fetch a cup of mulled wine for the lady. And a bowl of hot stew to take the chill off. His lordship is coming in with a troop of cold men, so get those other lazy girls off their behinds and have them ready to serve them when they come in."

The girl scampered off. Keitlan took Yoko's cloak and her gloves and scarf and the inner layer of coat and trundled off with a full armful of winter gear. Yoko was left standing before the fire, shivering, her hair clinging to her face from static, her lips chapped from cold. The girl came back with a cup and a wooden bowl.

"Sit down. Sit down." The girl gestured to the table closest the fire and set the bowl and cup down there. Yoko did as she was bid, gratefully taking the warm cup in her hands and sipping the mulled sweet wine. Wonderful. The warmth. The taste. She closed her eyes in a moment of contentment and opened them with the girl staring at her from across the table. 

"His lordship's never brought a woman here before." The serving girl stated, eyes very very curious. Yoko sighed, figuring that gossip would soon be running rampart. She knew the ways of servants and the speculation that would run the gambit of the staff, from stableboys to cooks to chambermaids. 

"He offered me a kindness." She said, in attempts to turn the tide of speculation to a path less destructive. "When there was no one else to do it. I don't know how long I'll stay."

The maid did not have the time to comment, for the doors burst open and men stomped into the hall, bringing cold wind and errant flakes of blown snow with them. The girl, Setha, hurried for the kitchen entrance, no doubt to start bringing out wine and food. 

They shed cloaks and winter gear, a loud noisome lot that tracked mud and snow onto the bare stone floors. Gara, red nosed and red fingered, came and sat down next to Yoko, a grin of flushed excitement on his face. 

"Wondered where you'd got to. Damn, its cold out and not even full winter yet."

"Oh, wonderful." She murmured, not heartened by that fact. Men were crowding the tables, Gara's, Kall-Su's. She did not see the Ice Lord himself. 

"Where's Kall?"

Gara shrugged, eyeing her mug of aromatic wine enviously. "Seeing to this -- that. You know how he likes crowds."

Setha and a half dozen other serving girls began to file out from the kitchen, bearing trays of bread, stew and hot wine. Gara got his wine and pitcher of the same sat on the table within easy reach. He was happy. Yoko was tired. She sat an elbow on the table and played listlessly with her stew. Her stomach complained and she feared to lose its contents, which made her think of what she carried within her and where its father was at this moment -- and with who. She sighed miserably and blinked back wetness. 

She swam in a sea of noise and smells and he own unease until Gara looked over his shoulder and a hand was laid on her own soon after. The house mistress, Keitlan looked down at her.

"Do you want to see your room, lady Yoko? I've had a fire set."

Blurrily, Yoko nodded. She rose and swayed unsteadily. Both Gara and Keitlan reached out to catch at her arms. 

"I'm okay. I'm okay." She assured them both, even though her vision wavered alarmingly. The house mistress hummphed. Gara drew his brows in concern. 

"You look sick." He remarked. 

"Small wonder." Keitlan snapped. "Poor girl being dragged along in the middle of an army and at this time of year. Come along."

She gripped Yoko's elbow with fingers that Yoko had no strength to shake off. Off the right and through a door. There was a hall and stairs. They went up the stairs to a second floor with doors lining its corridor. There was an open one, where a maid entered before them with an arm full of bedclothes. Keitlan led her into it. 

A simple room, with high ceiling and one crystal paned window. A bed with the makings of a canopy but no cloth hanging over it. A chest of drawers, a table with a wash basin, a chest at the foot of the bed. A fireplace where a newly made fire crackled. A small room to the side where a door hid a garderobe. The floor was bare and cold. There was nothing to make it cheery or welcoming. Keitlan smiled her own welcome. 

"I'm told you've nothing of your own, so I'll have some things brought to you, until we can get something made of your own. I've a few girls who are close to your size."

"Thank you." Yoko whispered. The maid made up the bed. There were thick coverings over the sheets. It at least looked inviting. 

"Are you still hungry?" 

"No. I think I'll just rest."

Keitlan nodded, as if she had thought the same thing. "Shall I have the girl stay and help you?"

"No. I'll be fine."

So they left her finally in peace. She stood before the fire, hands out, basking in the warmth, clearing her head of thought, merely staring at the hypnotic flame. She shed her clothing, piece by piece by piece, draping it over the chest, until she stood bare to all the world. Her skin pimpled at the cold, but she ignored it, wishing for a mirror, hands smoothing over the skin of her belly. She wished she could see if there was a swelling, but from the angle she looked, there was nothing but the flat tummy she had always had. She crawled under the cool sheets then, and pulled the blankets up over her head, hiding from the world. Breathing in the cold, fresh scent of the sheets, telling herself that things would start to get better now that she was done with traveling. Telling herself that all she had to do now was concentrate on the life she carried and not on the things that had sparked it. She bit her lip and coiled her knees up to her chest, an ache so profound and painful that it took her breath, twisting in her chest. 

Oh, liar. Liar. She cried inside her head, belittling herself for her optimism. As if she could push the hurt away when the wound gaped so cruelly open in her heart. Tears spilled from beneath her lashes. Bitter, silent tears. She never used to cry. She had always been so strong and all it had taken to dash the strength was a declaration of love. 

Eventually, exhaustion conquered misery and sleep claimed her. The tears dried on her cheeks. 

Kall-Su retired to his study, leaving the troops to Kiro's care. He had a very efficient staff, who performed their duties quietly and quickly in a manner they knew their lord preferred. He had faith in their abilities, especially when he had other matters on his mind. Since he had heard of Schneider and Yoko's encounter with the forest spirit and the seemingly all powerful Mother, he had been bitten badly with the urge to find out more of the eldritch and very old powers that had existed on earth before this age or the one of technology before it. He had never had an interest before, being more consumed with the gathering of power that he could touch and use. But he was intrigued by the notion of the old powers now. In his vast collection of books, there was sure to be hints and references. It would take forever to hunt them down, which did not daunt him, for he enjoyed the solitude of his library. He was eager to begin the search, almost to the point of excitement. His housekeeper stopped him on the stairs, her ruddy, broad face creased with wary speculation. 

"Yes, what is it." He had other things on his mind than domestic issues. She never bothered him with such matters. 

"The lady, my lord."

"What of her?"

"Um -- where would you like her placed?"

Why he should care was beyond him. "In a room would be nice. A warm one."

Keitlan twisted her hands, nervously. She was not a woman usually given to nerves. His patience began to wear. 

"I had thought -- that perhaps you would want her placed near your own rooms, my lord."

He stared, understanding dawning. His staff thought he had brought home a mistress. His housekeeper, who had always been bold in her own deferential way, was poising the question to him. He gave her a cool, reproving stare.

"It matters not to me. The lady is here for her own entertainment and no one else's, am I clear?" 

His look intimated that he expected her to see that no tongues wagged in the byways of the servant's domain. She nodded, accepting that without question and he was certain that Keitlan would see to matters. She ruled her people with an iron fist. 

"Of, course, my lord. I'll set things straight."

The world settled down. It snowed and Yoko sat in her room, on the stone window ledge that was wide enough for to comfortably perch, with knees drawn up to chest, and watched it through the leaded glass windows. She drew aimless designs on the frosted glass with her fingertips. She stayed abed slothfully late, and took her meals in her room, having no desire to walk among other folk and see their laughter and their smiles while she had none. She moped dreadfully, with hardly the energy to eat. Gara came to see her, to try and talk her out of her rooms and into some semblance of life, but she drove him away with her heavy sighs and distant stares. Kall-Su did not come to visit, but if what she overheard of the maid's talk was correct, he practiced the same habits she did, closeting himself away for days at a time in his library or his study, with hardly a care for the outside world. 

The maids thought she was morose and spoiled. She could see it in their eyes, when she took the interest to look, and hear it in the way they spoke to her. A sullen, spoiled lady from the south, who disliked the cold of their northern city. She had complained about the chill once to the maid Keitlan had assigned her, asking for more blankets and the word had spread. She cried a good deal and the maids were quick to catch on to that as well, seeing red eyes or her quick attempt to wipe wetness from her cheeks when they happened in with her meals or wood for the fire or hot water for bathing. She was sure they speculated among themselves as to what tragedy had befallen her, their lord's most melancholy guest. 

Keitlan happened by regularly, always with a frown of disapproval on her face, when she found Yoko sitting at the window staring distractedly outside. 

"Can I bring you something?" she would ask. "Do you read? My lord has an extensive collection."

No. That was quite all right.

"Something to occupy your hands? Needlepoint?"

Some other time, perhaps. The snow is enthralling. 

Keitlan would leave with as much disgust as she came with. Yoko felt guilty every time she saw the woman. Weeks passed. Life began to become disjointed and meaningless. She began to hate the thought of waking up in the morning. She would happily have slept her life away, except for the occasional dream -- nightmare -- she wasn't sure which -- about him. He had always plagued her dreams -- caressing her sub-conscious with erotic hints and sexual innuendoes, only now she knew what it was like in the flesh. Now she knew how truly inferior the dreams were. She hated herself every time she woke with heart pounding in chest and sweat on her brow, balling her fists into her eyes until the images passed. 

She wanted to die. She thought about how much peace that would bring. She thought that it would make him feel some sort of remorse. Despite all that he had done, she knew he would feel remorse. 

The maids, when they came, had garlands in their hair, and more sprite in their step than usual. Winter Festival, she heard. Sta-Veron was in the midst of celebrating the onset of true winter, while the rest of the world mourned it. 

Kall-Su came by her room. Knocked politely at the door and entered at her somber bidding. He stared at her long enough to make her uncomfortable, concern growing in his eyes. 

"Yoko, you look -- unwell." He finally said. He looked very fine in a embroidered blue overtunic, over black trousers and boots. 

"I'm fine." She lied.

"There is a feast tonight, celebrating Winter Festival. Keitlan said you declined to come."

"I'm --- not in the mood for a feast, Kall."

"Perhaps you should. Have you seen the city?"

"From the window."

"I think you should come down and join the feasting. I think it would do you good."

She shook her head, staring into the fire. 

"Yoko, what are you trying to do? Loose yourself in solitude. It never works, believe me. Sooner or later, you have to come out."

"I'm not." She tried to assure him, but her voice came out shaky. "I just can't --- they'll expect me to smile and laugh -- and I can't." She wiped furiously at a rebellious tear that rolled down her cheek. He looked at her, then away, appearing shaken himself. He took a breath, then approached her, crouched by her chair so he was eye level with her. 

"I promised you my protection. I see I've been remiss in it. What are you doing to yourself, Yoko? You can't moon over him forever. He doesn't appreciate it. I don't know if he can. All it does is hurt you."

"How long is forever?" She murmured.

"Too long. Please come to the feast."

She sniffed and nodded. 

Keitlan came by personally to see that Yoko was presentable for feast. Or more likely that she would not back out on her word to Keitlan's lord. She saw Yoko bathed and combed and brought forth a green muslin overdress and layers of soft warm underdresses beneath. Yoko let herself be arranged. Let Keitlan fix her hair and only half listened to the woman's comments on how thick it was, and how lovely an amber shade. 

"So," the housemistress said, putting a last ornamental pin in the shining coils of Yoko's hair. "Who's the father?"

Slowly, Yoko blinked, staring in shock at the wall before her, then at Keitlan as the woman moved into her line of sight, and stood there, hands on stout hips. 

"What?"

"Of your child?"

"How --? Who told you that?"

Keitlan sniffed. "No one had to tell me, girl. You're not far enough along to start showing, at least not obviously, but you've been here long enough to bleed and you haven't, and I've seen women with child who went into sulks like yours. And with no man to claim you, a woman can understand why."

"Oh, goddess." Yoko felt weak kneed. Keitlan patted her hand in a motherly fashion. 

"It's all right. It's not your fault if you've been abandoned by the scoundrel. Men are like that sometimes. No good, the majority of them. Don't let it weigh on your soul. For the child's sake if nothing else. Go and enjoy yourself at feast tonight. Goddess knows you'll be the first woman to sit at our lords side since I can remember. You'll be the envy of many, that's for sure. He's a pleasure to look at, that one." 

Yoko was speechless. She couldn't quite catch her breath to talk. 

"You need to find something to take your mind off your troubles." Keitlan gave her one last word of advise, before there was a rap on the door and the housekeeper shooed Yoko towards it. 

It went by in a blur, the Festival Feast and the entertainment's afterwards. There was food that she ate, and wine that she drank. Gara talked to her more than Kall-Su did. The Ice Lord sat and watched, eyes closed off even from the revelry of his own people. She thought this night was almost as much a chore for him, who disliked close association with people, as it was for her. There were jugglers and musicians and dancing. The hall was close with people and talk. Outside the streets of the city were also full of merriment, of people toasting the winter and daring it to best them yet one more year. She had a sudden insight, as to the reason these people celebrated a season of lifelessness and bitter cold. Because if they did not celebrate it, then they would drown from the bitterness of fighting it. They had to do something to make it better in their minds. To make the weeks and months of winter storms that she had heard plagued the north seem a challenge rather than a punishment. 

She listened to Gara talk about the camouflage techniques he and his ninja had been practicing in the snow, and only half heard him. She thought Keitlan was right. She had to do something to divert her mind, or she would drown. And she could not -- would not -- let him push her to that. 

[ Next][1]

   [1]: aftermath28.htm



	29. Chapter 29

aftermath29

**Twenty-nine**

Kall-Su found a book that delved into legends of yore. He was not certain if it was mere fable or in some part based on fact. Anything pre-destruction -- and he thought this book was -- was not to be trusted when it discussed the arcane. They took magic so frivolously, not believing in anything other than their precious technology. He understood the withering of things magic in that cruel, old world. When people stopped believing and when civilization over ran the boundaries of sacred places, then magic drew away. Further and further away, until in the minds of men, it no longer existed.

It was the way with creatures of magic. Which was not to say it was the way of creatures that controlled magic. They were two breeds of a very different color. A man might not be magic to use magic. Mortal men utilized magic every day. Mortal men might, if technology had not been outlawed centuries ago, use both magic and science and not bat an eye. Now a creature of magic, a creature that was in and of itself born of magic -- that was another story. Powerful though it might be, it could not co-exist with the world of technology. It could not survive the preponderance of a civilization dominated by technology. So, it might retreat to the most remote of places to exist within its own limited spear. That had happened, he thought, during the old age. All the things that had dwelled in the world before man overran it with his science, had retreated or been destroyed by disbelief until they were few and far between. The Lady of the Forest was once such. As were a good number of creatures that had begun to emerge over the last century or two, encouraged by the magic that had come back to the world and the destruction of a civilization technology had made.

Technology was anathema to magic, extinguishing it with its undeviating march, while magic could only destroy technology with the onslaught of violence. And then only by the hand of man. A hypocrisy of sorts. It fascinated him. Schneider would have been a font of information. A wealth of facts, if he chose to reveal them, or remembered them. There were a dozen places Kall had marked in books that he longed to ask his mentor about. They would go unanswered for some time, he thought, until this rift had been healed.

There was a soft rap on the library door. He was so caught up in a passage that he ignored it. It occurred again and he looked up in irritation.

"Yes?"

The door opened marginally and Yoko slipped into the room, looking bashful and pale. His irritation fled. He had not seen her outside of her room since the feast four nights past. He was immediately worried to see her now.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing." She fiddled with the long braid that hung over her shoulder. He continued to stare, waiting.

"I was thinking that maybe I might take a look around the city. I was thinking that maybe I might buy a few things to make my room a bit more comfortable. A rug. Perhaps a wall hanging -- or something. I think it would make me feel better to do a little shopping."

"Then by all means do it." He encouraged.

"I don't have any money."

He half smiled. "Have whatever you want billed to me. No one will refuse you."

She returned the smile shyly. "Thank you, Kall. I-- I know I've been terrible. I'll try to be better."

"Don't worry about it."

She backed out of the room, closing the door quietly behind her. One hoped this was the prelude to lighter spirits with her. She sorely deserved to smile again and truly mean it. Then his thoughts drifted back to the book and he forgot everything but his research.

Yoko bundled herself up in a cloak and mittens and a scarf and prepared to plunge into the crisp coldness of a clear northern afternoon. She was down the steps and half way across the courtyard when Gara strode up to her and matched her pace.

"Oh. Hello."

"Hello yourself, little girl. Glad to see you out and about."

"I'm going into town."

"I know."

She squinted up at him.

"You're not going by yourself." He clarified.

She almost laughed. "I don't need a body guard, Gara."

"Oh, well." He lamented, shrugging.

"Gara."

"These are good folk, as a general rule, but they're rough and hardened in a way that the people in Meta-Rikan never will be. Different customs, different way of looking at a lone women. There's slavery in the north, little girl and even though its not practiced in Sta-Veron, slavers travel though this city. I'd prefer not to have to track you down through miles of snow if some slaver sets his sights on your pretty little self."

"My pretty little self is not helpless."

"I know." It was useless to argue with him. Gara was going into town with her. They walked out of the gates of Kall-Su's castle and onto the streets of Sta-Veron. Buildings crowded close to the castle walls. There were shops and taverns right outside the gates. Most of those catered to the Ice Lord's militia.

"So, I hear you're pregnant."

She drew air in through her teeth and glared at him, exasperated. Did everyone know? Had word been posted on the castle walls?

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Humm. Don't much blame you. If it were any other black hearted vermin who did it to you I'd have him on his knees begging for mercy before I castrated him. But, it wouldn't work with Schneider. If you can regrow a heart, you can regrow a cock -- excuse the terminology."

She sniffed, not happy with the topic of discussion. She had come out here to not think about Schneider. And now Gara had her visualizing all sorts of lurid things. She folded her arms under the cloak and hugged herself. Gara sighed and patted her shoulder.

"Sorry."

"It's okay. The castration thing was interesting."

He laughed. "So, Keitlan says we're going shopping."

"Keitlan obviously talks to much." Yoko muttered.

Most of the shops in Sta-Veron were geared more towards the utilitarian needs of the winter city. Yoko paused at a tannery window, admiring a pair of high, fur lined winter boots. Gara urged her to go in and look at them. They fit well and looked rather nice on her. She looked to Gara uncertainly as she unlaced them.

"Go ahead, get them. Kall's got deep pockets."

Which was all the encouragement she needed. She purchased from the same shop a large white fur coverlet for her bed, and a thick, soft pelt to cushion the window seat in her room. She directed everything but the boots, which she wore, to be sent to the castle. The merchant was all smiles when she left.

There was a weaver of rugs not far down the street. She wondered into the front showroom, fingering the utilitarian rugs that were on display. Rough weaves that would take the dirt and snow tracked in by heavy boots. She wanted something softer and more appealing to the eye. Gara lifted a canvas from a stack of carpets in the back, that boasted a bit more color and a finer weave.

"Why are these hidden away?" She asked the merchant, impressed with the pattern and the texture.

"People here abouts aren't as interested in luxury as they are in durability." The merchant lamented.

Yoko found a deep green one she liked and a smaller creme colored one to go before the window. "Do you have a carpet in your room?" she asked Gara. He shrugged. "Stone floors are fine by me."

"Give me this one too, for my friend." She decided. "I'm looking for a wall covering. A thick tapestry to help insulate the cold. Can you recommend a shop?"

The merchant did, and promised to have her carpets delivered that evening. The smell of cinnamon and spices caught Yoko's attention. There was a tavern where the smells originated and she gravitated that way. Apples right out of the oven, baked with sugar and spices and basking in a syrupy sauce. She had to have one. Gara bought them both apples and mugs of ale. She found her appetite tremendously huge. The shopping had invigorated her. The apple was hardly enough and she ordered a bowl of stew and bread, gobbling it down with intensity that astonished Gara.

Pleasantly sated she went in search of tapestries and found the little shop recommended. The merchant had a few small wall coverings amidst a cornucopia of odds and ends. He claimed to be an import/exporter who dealt in all manner of goods. She took the tapestries and was drawn to a bolt of fine cloth, thinking it would make a nice canopy for her bed. The merchant offered her a deal and she couldn't refuse.

"If you're interested in tapestries, I happen to have a shipment of large ones I had planned to ship south with the next merchant caravan. Captain Kiro refused to let it pass in the autumn when the army marched south -- so they're stuck here till the spring thaw."

"How big?"

"Oh, very. Fit for a palace."

"Oh, my rooms not very big."

His face fell. Yoko chewed her lip. Gara browsed among the knic knacs. "I could look at them anyway."

They were in the back room. A great pyramid of rolled weavings that could have been carpets they were so large. The merchant, with her help partially unrolled one, which seemed to have a scene of some noble party hunting an impressive stag. It was western work, she was sure by the fineness of the stitching. There were six of them, all with different and delightful scenes depicted, the merchant assured her. She thought about the great, barren stone walls of the main hall and how nice they would look with a splash of color, with a buffer between them and the cold world outside.

"They're probably very expensive."

"Undoubtedly."

"They would look very nice in lord Kall-Su's main hall."

"Oh, most assuredly they would. Tapestries of great worth used to adorn those walls." The old man's eyes gleamed. Yoko lifted a curious brow.

"What happened to them?"

"Oh, years ago, when he took this city from the previous lord who ruled here, his men looted and stole a good deal of the riches the old lord had collected. When he decided to make Sta-Veron his home, he stopped the looting of course, and made restitution to the people here who had suffered under the hands of his army, but he never chose to refurbish the castle. He's austere, you know and not much for the trappings of obvious wealth."

"Oh, no." Yoko said, waving a hand in dismissal. "He's just doesn't take the time to notice. He gets distracted by his books and things."

She was very certain of this. She was very certain that what Sta-Veron castle needed was a breath of life to chase away the somber cold grayness of perpetual winter.

"I'll take them."

"All of them?"

"Yes. And I was thinking -- there are bare halls and rooms aplenty -- do you know of a good weaver?"

Things began to appear in Sta-Veron castle gradually. Simple little things that one hardly blinked an eye at, if one even chanced to notice them at all the first or second, or even sixth time one passed by. There was a long, narrow carpet in the hall outside the library that Kall-Su trod upon twice before realizing that it had not been there mere days before. He passed, on his way downstairs, a pair of chamber maids, who usually bowed their heads and scurried past him in silence, but today, merely curtsied respectfully before returning to their animated conversation regarding cushions for the new benches in the main hall. One hardly paid heed to the babbling of serving girls on a normal basis, but their excitement over the subject of mere cushions pricked a nerve of wary interest.

Down to the main hall, on his way out to the courtyard and the stables, much in need for a bit of cold, fresh air and a ride through the snow after days cloistered in his library without setting a foot outside its boundaries. Color splashed the tall walls of the hall. A fair number of people scurried here and there. There was the sound of hammering and sawing. There seemed to be a workshop set up near the great hearth. He stopped, half way across the hall, attention rebounding away from thoughts of riding and weeks of research into archaic lore, and snapping sharply to reality.

There were huge tapestries hanging from beneath the windows. Three of them on either side of the hall. There was a large, blue carpet covering the floor of the further end of the hall and at the doors a thick, coarsely woven mat that men carefully stomped their boots upon to rid them of snow and filth before proceeding on into the hall. Those that did not were scolded by any of the various maids working about the chamber.

A man carrying a long stack of planks over his shoulder came in from the cold, and Kall had to step back to avoid the trailing end of the boards as the man half turned to answer some question from a boy carrying a bag of nails behind him. There seemed to be a fair number of new tables and benches gracing his hall. The old ones were stacked in a jumbled pile against one wall, some of them dismantled, for wood, one guessed, and ready to be hauled away. This was not the hall he had last set foot in -- during the Festival Feast? How long ago had that been? Time became elusive when he had his mind set on a certain goal. Two weeks? More?

He saw the stout form of his house keeper directing the workmen to keep off the new carpet and beckoned her over. She didn't notice him. He took a breath, beleaguered in the midst of the confusion in his own hall and walked across the hall towards her. One of her girls saw his approach first and pulled at her mistress's dress to get her attention.

"Oh, my lord." Keitlan beamed at him, dusting her hands on her apron. "As you can see, things are going very well."

"So it seems." He gave her a look and turned and walked away from the fervent attention of the serving girl. When he had put distance between them and eager ears, he waved a hand around the room. "What, prey tell, is all of this?"

"Oh, the lady came to me and asked what I thought most needed attention and between the two of us we thought the great hall most needed the work, it being the face the castle shows to the world and all."

"You and the --lady? Yoko?"

Keitlan nodded. "She seems in such better spirits when we're about this, but I fear she still mopes when she's alone. It was such a generous thing you did for her. Nothing lifts a woman's mood like redecorating. The staff is enraptured by the whole thing, my lord."

He stared at her. He stared at the room behind her, vaguely recalling something about Yoko asking if she might buy a few things. He had been rather distracted at the time. Keitlan was beaming at him. The staff was busily transforming the Spartan lines of the great hall. He wondered distractedly how much the lightening of Yoko's depression was going to cost him.

The courtyard was more covered in icy mud than snow, from the passage of so many busy feet. One had to be careful treading across the slick surface, unless one wished to suffer the indignity of slipping. The air was frigid and still, the sky covered with a film of gray clouds that hid the sun behind their veil. It could been seen dropping to the west, a faint, glowing orb of brightness behind layers of distorting clouds. It did nothing to warm the day. Every living being in the yard expelled a cloud of fog with their breath.

Kall-Su made his way to the stables. Wagons trundled in and out of the gates, filled with lumber or goods of who knew what nature, or merely the daily produce that the castle bought to feed its lord, staff and on duty guard. The stable master saw him coming and met him at the entrance to the stables, asking if he were up for a ride on such a cold day.

He was. He missed the white face of his favorite horse nickering at him over the edge of the most prominent stall door. The stablemaster had a thick coated, spirited chestnut saddled for him. The animal pricked its ears and nuzzled experimentally at his glove as stableboys rushed to give tail and mane a quick going over, aghast at the thought of their lord riding out on a horse not properly groomed.

Kiro appeared in the shadow of the stable doors when he was preparing to mount, looking as if he'd run to get here.

"Are you going out, my lord?"

"Yes."

"Shall I gather an escort?"

"No." Emphatically no. He was not in the mood for a procession of men following him on what would be more than likely an aimless excursion. He led the horse to the door, past his captain and paused.

"And what do you think of the remodeling of the great hall?"

"Oh, its past due, my lord. A very good decision."

"Humm. I'd thought as much."

He swung up into the saddle and rode around a wagon stuck in an icy rut and the confusion of men trying to get the leverage to push it out. Down the cobbled streets of the city where the garlands of Winter Festival were almost gone. Out the main gates and past the surprised salutes of the city guard.

Snow. A vast field of that spread as far as the eye could see. Unbroken save for the packed trail leading into the city from the north, where the nearest line of forest could just be seen. Only the hunters ventured out this time of year. Sta-Veron had supplies to last the longest, harshest winter within her storehouses. Only the luxury of fresh meat and the furs and skins that came with it, prompted men to risk being caught in the wilderness during a long winter storm. He headed down the trail, giving the chestnut his head. The young horse broke into a heady run, eager to stretch its legs after being confined to a stall for too long. It was sure footed, bred to traverse snow and ice and hardly slipped or faltered along the slick path.

He thought that if Yoko cured her melancholy with the revitalization of his castle, then so be it. He had never quite paid attention to the bareness of the floors or the stark nature of the walls. There were generally more dire things to occupy his attention. He wished hadn't the need. He wished he could understand the reason things had gone so dreadfully bad for her. He had never, in all the years he had known Schneider, truly understood the way his mind worked. Oh, he tried. He had spent years obsessing on it. And when he thought he had a clue, Schneider just up and changed on him. It was as if he did it apurpose, trying to keep everyone off their balance. Even those that loved him most.

Kall had replayed his last conversation with Schneider over and over in his head, trying to find a clue of what drove the man to repel what he had before that cherished. It made no sense. It was as if he were punishing her for something, but Yoko, from what small bit she would talk of their time together, seemed not to know what for.

It wouldn't last, though. It never did. Schneider might hold his grudge and practice his animosity for a while, but eventually he always came back to place his claim on what he considered his. And when he did -- a year down the road -- two -- or even more, he would discover the secret they had withheld from him. Then there would be hell to pay.

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   [1]: aftermath30.htm



	30. Chapter 30

aftermath30

**Thirty**

Keladedra sat upon the shores of an ocean, the blue western sea on side and the hazy line of mountains on the other. It was a city of white stucco villas and flagstone streets that wound charmingly around the sprawling estates of its governmental palace. It was most certainly a retreat for the wealthy, for the prices were high and the services geared towards the tastes of people used to getting their own way in every matter. It sprawled about a protected cove, the shores of which were lined with exquisite and private villas, each with a private dock and grounds to match the gardens of Paradise.

It had been taken by the forces of Dark Schneider perhaps fifty years past. He had been so impressed by the Mediterranean charm of the place that he had kept it whole and unblemished by the hand of his army. There had been a villa on the south side of the cove that he had claimed as his own and for some time had used it as a retreat from the rigors of conquering a world. He had not been there in a very long time.

Long enough for some fat merchant to have taken roost in it, no doubt paying a handsome rent to the city managers for the honor.

Arshes and Schneider rode down from the mountain road and into the unwalled suburbs of the city. Brown skinned children ran laughing in the streets. Casual, if well-dressed men and women strolled the sidewalks, fat and content in life. Keladedra custodians patrolled unobtrusively, insuring that their sea side city remained a safe and trouble free haven for their wealthy citizens. There was no standing army in Keladedra. There was little threat of an attack from land, since most of the wealthy nobles of all the continents kingdoms had homes or at least vacationed in Keladedra. There was a navy that patrolled the seas, keeping pirates at bay. Pirates were and always had been a problem to sea side cities, and doubly so for rich ones. But, Keladedra had one advantage to its neighbors up and down the coast. It had a barrier reef of unnatural origins that protected it during all but the highest tides. One had to know the channels to sail into the town unscathed, other wise the sunken skeleton of a city of old would rip the hulls from any ship heavy enough to ride more than a two meters under the waves. Sometimes, at low tide the ragged tops of the few remaining structures pierced the surface of the water, awesome reminders of how great the builders of the old world had been.

They rode through the city and down the colloquial road that led to Schneider's villa. There were ivy covered white walls around it with iron gates locked tight. He corrected that matter with no more than a will and a touch and the gates swung open. The grounds were green with foliage even so late into the year. The flowers were not in bloom, but one could not have everything. Servants saw their approach down the lane and ran to the main house to inform their master of unannounced visitors. A fat, sweaty little ground hog of a merchant wheezed out onto the front porch to reproach their rudeness.

Schneider swung down before his horse had quite stopped and tossed the reins to one of the dark skinned servants who stood gaping nearby. He looked over the facade of the villa. More ivy. More attention to the gardens around it. But, other than that changed very little. It did not make him feel any better at the sight of it. He had hoped that it would do something to lift the black veil from his mood. All it did was piss him off that there was a grotesque little man waving a finger at him and demanding that he vacate his property. He thought about turning the irritating merchant into a puddle of molten sludge, but that would only have to be cleaned off the nice white porch. So he ignored him and stalked up the steps onto the covered porch. A few shy faces peeked out of windows, then quickly retreated when he walked by. Servants who were no doubt enthralled by the upset in their master's life.

The man marched after him, still babbling. He heard Arshes dismount and speak quietly to the almost hyperventilating merchant.

"You are mistaken. This is not your house. This is his house."

"It most certainly is not. I pay a hefty rent for this villa. I will have the custodians on you, if you don't leave."

"Do you know who he is?"

"I'm certain I don't care."

"He is Dark Schneider."

There was a long moment's pause. "Dark Schneider is dead."

Schneider looked over his shoulder, black lashes at half mast. He smiled lazily, a glimmer of white teeth and malice. The merchant's sandals began to smoke. The man shifted uncomfortably, not understanding at first what was happening to him. Then he began to shift from foot to foot and finally looked down as smoke began drifting up from his feet. The soles of his sandals began to glow with red heat and the man screamed, scrambling backwards, falling onto his side and desperately kicking the burning shoes from his feet. The soles of his feet were blackened and charred. He kept screaming until Schneider came to stand over him.

"Funny. I don't feel dead. You might be, if you're still here when I finish looking over the grounds. Oh and leave the domestics. I'll have use of them." He turned away and drifted down to the end of the porch, where steps led down to a path that led to beach. He heard the muffled complaints of the merchant. The threats of the man going straight to the city council with this outrage and Arshes' quiet encouragement to do just that. Then he was out of earshot and walking down the narrow path to the ocean, a cool wind from the water bringing the smell of saltwater.

There was a pier a ways down the beach, with a small sloop rocking gently in the tide. His boots sank into white sand. He trudged out to where the sand turned dark from the soaking of the tide and stood staring out at the gray sea and the churning, smoke colored clouds that passed over her horizon. The wind whipped at his hair and sent his cloak billowing about him. It had always been peaceful here, at the edge of a sea that seemed endless. It had always soothed his soul. He searched for some hint of the serenity, some small clue that he could find it if only he wanted it bad enough. And found nothing. Nothing but a hard, black knot that coiled somewhere between heart and gut and would not go away. It just lurked there and ate at him.

He gave it a name. Hate. He just didn't know who to aim it at.

He stood there for a long while. He heard Arshes Nei's careful tread behind him. Her measured gait across the sand.

"He's gone." She said.

"Good. I wanted to burn him alive." He shivered. For a moment on that porch he had wanted more than anything to take that blathering life and reduce it to screaming ash. He had wanted to kill for the mere sake of slaking the thirst of that nasty little knot of hate inside him. And he did not want to be reduced to such a relief of pressure. Somewhere along the way, he had picked up a semblance of morality that he had most certainly not started with. Yoko's doing, he supposed. She had the most annoying habit of making him feel guilty or indebted, or responsible --- or miserable and on the wrong side of a matter when he had never doubted himself in all the long years of his life.

"Go away." He hissed at her ghost who plagued him even here on this beach.

"What?" Arshes looked up at him in surprise, her ears trembling in hurt offense.

"Not you. I'm not talking to you." He was able to get only a modicum of apology into his voice. She didn't ask, but he could see the plain question of just who he had been talking to in her brown eyes.

There was a gull in the distance that dipped and floated on the wind currents. He stared at it for a moment, then turned on his heel and stalked back towards the villa. Into the house and its cool, large rooms. A trio of servants, two girls and a boy, stared at him in fear. Together they could not have totaled more than forty years. He stabbed a finger at them and ordered.

"Whatever personal things of his -- I want out of here. Dump them beyond the gates."

They cowered, clutching at each other as if they expected him to cast some dire spell upon them.

"I only turn oily, fat merchants who don't know their place in the world into frogs. Obedient servants are safe, I assure you."

They nodded with superstitious reverence at the veracity of his words, then scampered towards the back of the house where the master bedchamber was to do his bidding.

"Well, we're here. Now what shall we do?" He asked, after Arshes had come back in and he was sitting in the sunken formal room, his boots propped atop a glass topped marble table. There was a stray scarf on the floor that the servants had dropped in their march from bedroom to gates and back again. The merchant had had a fair number of clothes.

"Must we do anything?" she asked quietly. "We used to come here and do nothing but watch the sea and loose count of the days."

"Ah, the good old days when I was out to conquer the world. Do you miss them?"

"Yes." She almost whispered.

He lifted a brow. "What? All the widowed wives and orphaned children we left in our wake. I thought you had an issue with that?"

"I had you. None of the rest of it mattered."

"You don't now?" he asked archly, irritated.

She looked away, frowning and the little knot of hate pulsed, driving him to his feet in annoyance at all the hidden things behind her eyes. "Shall I prove it, Arshes?"

He caught her by the shoulders and kissed her, forcing her backwards with the roughness of it. She did not try and force him back. Her fingers caught at his cloak, trying to pull him closer. He backed her against the wall, tearing at the buckles of her armor, heedless of comfort or hurt in a driving need to release emotion. It worked it way down the hall and into the master bedroom and did not quite make it to the broad bed itself, but culminated on the floor before it, with armor and clothing divested only enough to sate the passion.

Finally, when he was spent, she did push him off and rolled to her side away from him, clenching her fists to her breast. He lay on his back, staring sightlessly at the ceiling, having gained little satisfaction from the sex act.

"You vent your frustration on me." She finally said. Not an accusation, there was no tone of that in her voice, but there was rancor and that he was not used to from her. "I don't mind. But would you do the same to her? Or is she too pure to mar with violence."

"Don't go there, Arshes."

She said no more. She rose, shedding the last of her armor and dropping it on the floor. She picked up an undergarment here and there, and donned them. Found her belt and her pouch and said.

"I'm going to buy some clothing. I've sore need of it. Would you come?"

He didn't answer. Just lay there on the soft rug looking at nothing. So she left and the only other sounds after she had gone were the servants trying to quietly creep about their own chambers.

The Keladedra Custodians did not come barging down the gates at the merchant's request. A trio of town councilmen did, bearing gifts and a conciliatory and abject apology for any inconvenience. Schneider stared them down with an sardonic cant to his brows and an intimidating silence while they babbled on about how if he had just let them know he was coming they would certainly have made his villa ready. They had not forgotten what was his in Keladedra, after all. But, it just wasn't good business to let such a lovely house go to waste. Surely he could understand that. Was there anything they could do for him? Anything at all? They would be most happy to accommodate any of his wishes if only he might refrain from injuring any more of their prominent citizens.

He agreed to think about it.

The eldest girl of the three servants was a passingly good cook. They took their meals out of the verandah more times than not, with the sea as an ever changing backdrop. The weather was good on this side of the mountains. Winter brought cool air and water too cold for swimming, but true cold weather never marred the city. Spring time was a marvel here. He remembered it well. He took the sloop out into the cove, past the arms of land and the dangerous waters of the channel. It was an insulation of sorts, with nothing but the sea surrounding a body. Nothing but water and more water and land only a strip of solidity in the distance. He spent hours out there, drifting, trying not to think at all, just riding the swells and loosing himself to the motion.

Sometimes Arshes went too, but he preferred to be alone and she knew it. She would cast him dark, unreadable looks from her her thick fringe of hair when he came back in, but never commented. He was bored by the end of two weeks. The knot still pulsed at his core. He slept with Arshes, but his dreams were plagued with images of Yoko and he woke cursing his subconscious. When had she gained such power? He supposed when he decided that he couldn't have her. That was generally the way of things. The forbidden fruit always being the most coveted. He tried to reason it out that way, but self-analysis had never held much allure for him. He was what he was and for the most part that was astoundingly good. He was doing an incredibly chivalrous thing here, he had to keep reminding himself. She was so much better off without him. She would find happiness elsewhere.

Which got him thinking about how and with who. Happiness for a woman generally involved a man. The image of Yoko with some other man sent fingers of cold rage up his spine. He much preferred the thought of her becoming a Holy Sword and remaining a virgin in service of her goddess. Of course the virgin thing was out of the question now, but every one knew Holy Swords were not on a whole completely pure. But, considering her banishment from Meta-Rikan and her holy order, that was no longer an option. Which left her wasting away a lonely spinster or finding a man to claim her. She wouldn't have a problem there, being Yoko and young and lovely and desirable in every way. She would find a husband very quickly, which meant he would have to kill a man. There was no way he could stand by knowing another man shared her bed and not destroy the brigand who invaded his territory. Of course one would have to do this without her knowing, which raised a whole different problem. His head hurt with it.

One afternoon, after drifting in the sloop for hours, doing nothing more ingenious than staring at the movement of clouds in the sky, the boat drifted past the jutting, much corroded remnant of one of the channels ancient obstacles. Arshes, who had elected to come out with him today, leaned along the boat rail, looking down into the blue green depths at the dark shadows of a long sunken city. He moved to stand beside her, staring at the rusted, pitted shape of an I-beam. He tried to recall what the name of this city had been and the memory eluded him. He wasn't certain he had ever known. He thought he should have, but so much of the time before was shadowed in uncertainty. He crossed his arms over his bare chest, shivering of a sudden, unsettled by a change in the wind pattern. His hair blew across his face. Arshes' locks tickled his arm and back.

He had the urge to see what the centuries of decay hid below reef growth and silt. He wanted to see the bones of this city to absolve the sense of morbidity that he could not seem to shake. He stepped up to the side of the boat and Arshes demanded to know what he was doing.

"Nothing." He told her before he stepped off and into the water. The cold enveloped him. The darkness did. He closed his eyes and sank, enthralled by the feeling of drifting downwards, pressed by the weight of the water. He did something similar to a healing that staved off his lung's cry for oxygen. He was comfortable at the newness of water surrounding him. Water was not his element. The ocean was not an easily controllable force. That much water, so unfathomable a power, tended to overwhelm magic. There had always been the old legends that water and witches didn't mix. There was some truth in it.

He summoned a witchlight, that hovered over his head like a greenish spotlight, casting the world in an eerie, lurid glow. He sank past a great ridge. A barnacle, coral covered vertical drop regularly interspersed with cavernous openings. Windows. Row and rows of windows, all leading into blackness. Fish swam in and out of the openings, schools turning and fleeing from the sudden light that had invaded their world. He expanded the light and moved away from the ridge. They spread before him. An endless panorama of decay. Of bones, mostly broken and crumbled, but some still standing in one form or another, of what had once been a city vaster by far than the tiny resort town that sat on the edge of land where this metropolis had broken off from.

A shark swam by him, interested, but not threatening. He watched it momentarily, fascinated by the sensuous rhythm of its movements. A pair of pilot fish swam in its wake, hoping to feed off the scraps of its kills. He sank deeper. The bottom was an uneven mass of coral reefs and sand covered secrets. All the bodies had been washed away long ago, picked to pieces by all the hungry denizens of the sea. All that was left were the things that could not be eaten so quickly, but were eaten all the same, but corals and barnacles and all the living things that needed surfaces to grow on and thrive. Something stuck perpendicular up out of the silt, so rusted and wasted away as to be almost unrecognizable. One section of a train, he thought. It was too large to be a bus or a trolley car.

A vision flashed behind his eyes. Fire, and booming explosions. Sirens blaring in the background. Cars, trucks, buses, all manner of vehicles crashing into one another in their efforts to escape the destruction. The screech of metal as a train tried to stop in time to avoid a section of track that had been ripped away and being to late. Buildings crumbled. People died by the thousands, killing each other more efficiently than the biological monster that had been released upon them. But only for a while. The monster caught up.

He forgot the spell and sucked water into his lungs. The witchlight faltered in his surprise, in his sudden disorientation. His ears rang. Out of the depths it seemed a thousand, rushing voices called for vengeance. He shot to the surface, breaking through the waves and into the air above, hovering above the mast of the sloop which rocked not far away. He coughed water, blinked it out of his eyes. Arshes Nei stared up at him, her dusky face drawn with concern for him, when it was she that floated over a graveyard.

But they hadn't called out for her. He thought he was going insane. It wouldn't be the first time.

There was a round, central fire place in the sunken formal room of the villa. It was seldom used, since the weather stayed so fair. It roared tonight. He had caused it to blaze without benefit of fuel and sat before it, unable to shake the clammy coldness the sunken necropolis had left him with.

"I don't understand you." Arshes said, leaning against the doorway of the bed chamber, a goblet in hand. He said nothing, staring into the flames.

"You have your moods. How well I know them. But never this self-aimed morossness that you cannot seem to shake. What eats at you, Darshe? Is it her? Why did you leave her if it is so? You never denied yourself anything you wanted in the past. Far from it. You took what you want and the world be damned. Why is it so different with that -- girl? All you've done since we left Gara and Kall is to moon over her."

Still he wouldn't speak. She moved into the room, her shoulder against the wall.

"Did I ever make you feel this way? Did you ever torture yourself over me, while you were sleeping with every woman that caught your eye?"

"Why should I have?" he said without turning, a low seething voice. "You were always so accommodating as to turn the cheek."

"Oh, should I have cried and showed you and the world the hurt so blatantly? Would it have made a difference, other than to make others pity me?"

"No." A whispered honesty.

"No." She cried in agreement, throwing the goblet past him and crashing into the fire. The flames roared with the addition of wine to swallow. "So you know why I didn't. But she does and -- lo, you can't stop thinking about her."

"You don't know what I think."

"Why should you care? You left her. Your choice. What did she do to make you yearn for her so? What virginal little lies did she tell you? Was she even a virgin?"

"Shut up, Arshes."

"You shut up." She hissed at him. "I don't know what you see in her. She's not that special. Just another little pale skinned religious whore."

"Shut up! She's pure. In a way that you or I can never be. Don't slander her."

"I wish she were dead. I wish the child she carries were dead." She stopped suddenly, drawing a horrified breath.

He stopped breathing at all. The rushing in his ears that had persisted since the ocean graveyard pounded to a crescendo. He whirled to face her, eyes blazing, fists clenched, a pit opening at his feet that seemed to want to suck him bodily into it. He fought the vertigo.

"What did you say?"

"I didn't mean it." She shook her head, some slight fear entering her eyes.

"What did you say?" He rose and stalked towards her.

"It was said in anger. I wouldn't really ---"

He grabbed her arms and shook her so hard her had snapped back and forth.

"What did you say, Arshes? What child?"

She cried out in half anger, half pain and tried to wrench out of his grip. "Don't think you can bully me." She screeched, and an explosive force erupted between them, staggering him backwards a few steps. She fled towards the porch, tears streaking her face. He roared a word and the front of the house went up in a wall of raging fire. She skidded to a stop, and turned to face him, back to the flame, eyes wide with dread.

"What do you want of me?" she screamed past the inferno. "Couldn't you guess? I half thought you turned away from her because of it."

"No." The breath shuddered in his chest. The flames went out. The smoke remained. His eyes went hollow and shaken. He felt as if all the power, the magic, the strength and breath had been stolen from him. The knot in the center of his being pulsed, laughing at him maniacally and he knew who the hate was pointed at. Himself.

He had perpetrated those cruelties on Yoko and she had already been impregnated with his seed. Had that bitch Mother known? Of course, nature would. He had thought he was so smooth in distancing himself from her, and protecting them both, even if it hurt. And all the time -- all the damned time, it had been too late. Small wonder she'd looked so tragically disconsolate. Carrying his child and him snubbing her as harshly as he knew how. And hiding it from him. How had Arshes found out?

"Who told you?"

Arshes's hands were shaking. She clutched them together to stop the trembling and lifted her chin proudly. "Kall. She felt the need to tell him and not you."

"Kall?" Oh, beautiful. Not only did he criticize Schneider's action, he hid the fact that Schneider's woman was pregnant. The fire in the hearth roared up so violently it licked the ceiling.

But indignation only lasted a breath, drowned by the notion of Yoko having that child and loosing it to a bargain he had made, all by herself. He sat down on the back of the couch, stunned by the enormity of what he had wrought. No other monumental act of his had quite left him as drained and empty as this one. He had left her; driven her away to protect her and get out of a bargain he hadn't wanted to make in the first place.

Arshes came up beside him, and he hardly noticed her presence. She stood with her fists clenched, her wrists crossed over her breast, staring at his profile.

"So she's carrying a child. Why does that change anything? Why do you suddenly give a damn about anyone but yourself? You never have before." She was trying to sound reasonable. She was trying to control her voice, but there was fear in it.

"You knew this and didn't tell me." He glared up at her from under his lashes. She drew a shaky breath.

"Don't place the blame on me." She threw her head back and laughed desperately. "I can't even convince myself you should place it on her, though she should have been the one to tell you. Its your fault, Darshe. Nobody else's. Blame yourself."

He did. And to some certain degree, he would fix it.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath31.htm



	31. Chapter 31

aftermath31

**Thirty-one**

Keitlan had told her she was starting to show. She sat in the brass tub the maids had lugged up the steps to her room, luxuriating in water warmed over the fire and studied the distorted view of her belly through soap clouded water. The swell was there, a pronounced little curve in her stomach. Not a lot, she was slim of frame and Keitlan said she wouldn't become heavy till the later months of the pregnancy, but enough to feel, when she ran her hands over it. Such a two sided blessing, that blossoming thing that grew within her. On the one hand, it reminded her of him and brought on a bone deep hurt that she could not seem to shake. She didn't know if she would ever shake it. On the other, with each passing day, as she spied on the sleeping center of life with her healing magic, she became more and more enamored by it. It became more and more a thing that was an essential part of her.

She climbed out of the tub finally, fingers and toes wrinkled from the long soak, and wrapped in a thick robe while the maids emptied the tub and removed it from the room. She sat by the fire and let her hair dry, warm and comfortable and drowsy. There were still the faint sounds of celebration from the hall below. Captain Kiro and a squadron of men had apprehended a band of marauders who had been plaguing the northernmost villages of Kall's province. They had been feasting since early in the afternoon. In the dead of winter, any reason to celebrate was a good one. Yoko had not joined in. Feeling melancholy and just little off her kilter. Keitlan, who had become very much an ally and friend to her, had suggested it was nothing more than a pregnant woman's hormones acting up, and that she should stay in bed and relax. Yoko had no complaint there. It had been snowing the last few days and the weather was more bitingly cold than usual. Staying abed on the orders of the forceful house keeper was as good an excuse as any to snuggle up under the blankets and wallow in woe.

Keitlan brought her a glass of warmed milk with a dollop of honey and sat to talk for a while, discussing the antics of the jovial soldiers down below.

"What will happen to the bandits?" Yoko asked. ""Will they stand trial?"

The house keeper's face screwed up into prudish lines. "There's no trials out here for the likes of them. Their bodies were buried where they were caught and most likely it was a kinder fate than that they gave to all the poor villagers they raided. You're too soft hearted, Yoko."

"Perhaps." Yoko agreed quietly.

Keitlan patted her hand. "Probably why you're in the state you're in."

Yoko looked away. It had not been a soft heart that had perpetrated that. She had known exactly what she wanted deep down. Stupidity maybe, to think loyalty was a virtue he harbored, but not soft-heartedness.

"Well, its late and I've a hall to see cleaned, if all those boisterous men have stumbled off to pass out in their own bunks. To bed with you."

There was no argument there. Under the covers and into sheets warmed by a bed pan. Quiet, soft luxury. She shut her eyes and tried to think of simple, innocuous things that would not lead her into dreams of him. She thought of the baby, and the things she would teach it. The things they would do together. The companionship of something so closely connected with herself.

She drifted off and dreamed of a shining, beautiful little face with eyes as brilliant as a sky on the clearest of days. An ageless face, not quite a baby, not quite an adult. Something ethereal and in-between. The eyes seemed to bore through her soul. The lips whispered an endearment and the hands reached out -- not quite at her. Mother.

There was a crack. A shattering of glass and wood. Cold air washed over her face. With a startled cry she woke, heart pounding from the sudden wakening. Her window swung open, half off its hinges. Her window seat pillows were on the floor. She sat up, staring at the darkness beyond it, clutching her blankets to her breast, shocked and disoriented. Then the shadows moved towards her and she thought of assassins and marauders and bandits and fanatical priests and screamed. She threw up a frantic shield, and had it banished as if it were smoke. She drew breath to scream again and he brushed past the trailing edges of the bed canopy, moonlight making a silver halo of his hair. He bore he back, with a hand over her mouth and half lay atop her to hiss in her ear.

"Yoko. Its me. Calm down."

She shuddered, breathing in the scent of his palm, face tickled by the soft locks of his falling hair, body pressed by the weight of him, all in soft gray and white leather and suede. Her heart took up a frantic, erratic cadence in her breast. Her vision began to tunnel. He took his hand away and she sucked in air she had been denied and released it in an articulate screech.

"Calm down?" she screamed. "Get off. Get out." She flailed her limbs like a wild woman, dislodging sheets and quilts in efforts to get him off her. "How dare you come here? How dare you tell me to calm down, you unconscionable bastard. Leave me alone."

He rolled off her, but not off the bed, and she scooted back to press against the headboard, glaring at him with hysteria frothing over in her.

"Damnit, Yoko, just calm down. I want to talk to you."

"You want to make me insane." She cried, and put her hands over her ears. He hissed in exasperation and grabbed her wrists, prying them away effortlessly, holding them prisoned between them.

"Why the hell didn't you tell me you were carrying my child?"

"Why didn't you tell me you were an incorrigible whore who had to run and jump into bed with the first woman who made eyes at you? Oh, never mind -- I knew that." The last words ended with another high pitched screech. She felt the subtle magic of a intrinsic probe and knew he sought after the life within her. She wriggled and fought to free herself, sobbing at an intrusion she could not repel.

"Its not yours." She declared the first thing that came to mind. He gave her much the same look he might a lunatic child who claimed to have seen tiny little men dancing at the bottom of his mug.

"Oh, you had an affair with a logger in the forest that I was unaware of?"

"Oh, shut up. Go away. I hate you."

"You should have told me."

"When should I have? One of the few times you were out of Arshes' tent? When she was all over you? Should I have interrupted that to tell you the joyful news, you --- you liar." She was going to loose her mind. She felt the edges of her sanity fraying. Why was he here? What did he want of her? To torment her further. To laugh at her pain. Where was Arshes Nei? Would he go back and tell her how he had tortured Yoko?

"I did not lie to you."

She wanted to hit him so bad her nails bit into her palms.

The door to her room slammed open hard enough for the handle to knock plaster from the wall. The doorway was filled with the large, sword wielding figure of Gara. He had been roused most recently from sleep, from the look of him, tousled and shirtless and wild about the eyes. His gaze took in the room and her tormentor with a single glance and his lips curled in anger.

"Goddamned you. Leave her alone." The sword leveled, humming with threatening magic. Schneider snarled, cried out a word and the air between himself and Gara thrummed to life, shimmering as if from heat distortion. The Ninja Master cried out, struck by some great force that slammed him back into the wall of the hall outside. He hit so hard stone crumbled. The door fell off its hinges and the wood frame that had held it splintered and cracked. Gara slumped bonelessly to the floor, the blade hitting the carpeted hallway with a muffled thump. Yoko cried out in dismay. There were startled cries in the hallway outside, servants awoken by the disturbance and most certainly shocked by the sudden expelling of Gara from her rooms.

"Fuck." Schneider swore, at the sound of people summoned by her screams and his own burst of magic. The servants did not venture past her door though.

Kall-Su did. Just like Gara he had come from his own bed, with an embroidered robe tied about him and an icy look on his face. He stopped by Gara, hesitated long enough to see if the Ninja Master were alive and stalked into her room. Schneider was on his feet by that time and surging forward to meet the challenge.

"How dare you---?" Kall got out before Schneider hissed a word and Kall staggered backwards, holding up an arm reflexively to shield himself even as he threw up a shield of a more magical nature.

"You little son of a bitch. You knew and you hid it from me. You took her away when she carried my child."

Kall-Su snarled and something of equal and violent nature as what Schneider had thrown at him slammed into Schneider. Schneider shielded it.

"You invade my castle. You attack my guests. I do not wish a battle with you -- I swear I do not -- but you force my hand."

"You think you're up to it, Kall? Maybe wake up Gara and see if the two of you together can take me?"

Yoko couldn't stand it. She couldn't stand the violence and the anger and the indignant sound to Schneider's voice. As if he were the one slighted. She crawled off the edge of the bed. Pushed her feet into her slippers and slipped along the wall and out the door with neither wizard the wiser, the both of them being to wrapped up in facing each other. How could he do this? How could he come back when she was just starting to live again?

The entire, frenetic journey here, he had thought about what he would say to her. How he might explain, without explaining, what he had done. Why he had done it? All the things he would do to cajole her into forgiveness. He had a talent for talking his way into women's good graces, even women who knew better. He had forgotten that Yoko was for all intents and purposes immune to it. One forgot the sound of her screech and the heat of her glare after not being on the receiving end of it for a very long time. The sweetness of her embrace washed all of her more shrewish qualities away. He had not expected her to freak out on him. He didn't deal with accusations and verbal abuse well. So all his sweet words got pushed to the background as his defenses came up. Stupid. Stupid, to let her goad him into anger when he desperately wanted her exoneration.

Then come Gara and Kall, threatening, when his back was already to a wall higher and sharper than they could imagine. What did they expect? For him to act meek and shamble away with his tail between his legs. Little chance of that.

Kall was glaring at him with wide, ice blue eyes, breathing hard and looking torn between misery and stubbornness. He still had his shield up, though Schneider had dropped his, daring Kall to throw something else at him. Kall didn't. Kall hated fighting him. He knew that well.

"This is not your business, Kall. Stay out of it."

"It is. I offered her my protection. She took it. That means even against you."

"Oh, does it? That's too bad for you then, isn't it?"

A middle aged, broad boned woman appeared in the doorway with a rustle of nightskirts. She looked about the room in disgust laced fear, then glared at both wizards.

"Well isn't this a fine thing to wake up to? And in lady Yoko's own room. Look at the window." She cried and stalked past the two of them as if they weren't there. Then turned and shook a finger towards them.

"I don't know what all this clamor is about, but if it in any way concerned that girl, then you're both unobservant clods, because she's flown and in this weather."

Schneider whirled. The bed was empty. Yoko was nowhere to be seen. Kall' eyes widened and his shield faltered.

"Sonuvabitch." Schneider hissed. He stabbed a finger against Kall's shoulder and suggested. "Don't get in my way."

Then whirled and stalked for the window, because he knew deep down that she had fled the castle. He hit the cold winter air, flew over the courtyard and the castle walls. The streets outside were covered with a light film of snow. She hadn't gotten far. A shivering, white gowned form stumbling down the street outside the castle gates. He floated down in her path. She didn't even see him, her head down, her arms wrapped about herself and shivering so hard he could hear her teeth clatter, until he caught her arms and stopped her forward momentum.

"Are you insane?"

Her head snapped up, eyes wild with what very well might have been a touch of insanity. Bits of blown snow caught in her hair. White against dark auburn. Tears streaked down her cheeks. Her face was wet with them.

"Let me go." She whispered. He shook his head, hesitated a moment, then did. He reached up to unclasp his cloak and flung it around her shoulders. She did not reject it. Just kept walking, as if he might give up and go away if she ignored him. He walked beside her, thinking desperately what he might say to make her listen to him. What he could and could not admit to her to make her understand.

"I'm a fool sometimes. I act and I don't take the time to rationalize what I'm doing -- and sometimes I'm -- wrong." That was not an easy thing to admit. No one in the world would ever hear it but her. She made no response to it. What if she didn't? What if his ploy had worked too well?

"That's what happened. I got my powers back and it was like -- euphoria. Like some kind of drug and I wanted to destroy Angelo and that army so bad it hurt. You stopped me. You had that power and I still can't understand how you got it -- but it -- scared me." He drew an uncertain breath, mind scrambling desperately for excuses and realizing even as he said them that they were truths. "I had just finished being powerless and I find that someone still has to power to influence my wishes. I wanted to destroy that Army. I wanted to send the lot of them to hell -- and I couldn't because it would have hurt you. The only thing at the time I could think of to protect myself was to chase you away. You've been my conscience since I've known you and sometimes the things I need to do are better accomplished without the shackles of morality."

"Shackles?" She whispered. "Well, then you are best rid of me. I wouldn't want to ever bind you against your will. You've had enough of that."

He shut his eyes, saying prayers to gods he'd never worshipped that she was talking to him. "But it was just that moment. I wasn't in my right mind with my powers back and Angelo slipping through my grasp. I didn't mean it. I regret it. I wish I'd never done it."

"Done what? Treated me like the lowliest dog, or slept with Arshes before my eyes? Its not like you haven't done that before."

"I explained to you about Arshes." He said quietly.

"You explained nothing I want to hear." She glared up at him balefully. "You want her -- fine. I don't care. She doesn't seem to have a problem with your whoring."

It was the second time she'd called him a whore and he had to suck in a breath to quell the irritation.

"I don't want her. I want you."

"Liar. You want whatever you fancy at the moment. Me, her, Sheela -- Goddess she'd jump for your bed if you even glanced her way -- any other girl that catches your eye."

"Not true." He said vehemently.

"I'm not blind." She cried.

"I don't need them, if I've got you."

"Goddess, Rushie, you're not capable of fidelity. And I could deal with it then -- when -- before we -- "

"Made love?"

"Yes! But I can't now. I'm not Arshes Nei. I can't stand by and watch you -- do what you did with me with someone else. It hurts too much. Maybe you should be with her. She needs you so much that she'll endure the pain just because she's afraid of loosing you. Because she's afraid that if she calls you on it, you'll just give her some flippant remark and leave her for someone more flexible. I don't need you that much. No so much that I can ever endure that. So just go away an leave me to raise my baby where neither it or I will ever have to go through that. I don't want you anymore. I can't want you anymore."

"I want you." She hurt him. Her words stung with the lash of truth. Of Arshes, of him and worst of all, of Yoko. He felt sick from it.

"It doesn't work like that." She cried, stopping exasperated and staring up at him. "You can't have something just because you want it. Goddess I wish there was somebody strong enough to pound that through your thick skull. Oh, you made me hurt so much. You can't even realize what you did to me. I wanted to be dead. Dead!! I would rather die now that go through it again. Do you understand? Can you understand?"

She stood there, shaking, her arms clutching the cloak about her body. And he stared, profoundly shocked at such an admission. That he had injured her so badly that she contemplated death. For a moment he hardly saw her, envisioning the world without her in it. A dozen vision of her lifeless body. Just the thought of it hurt so bad that his eyes watered.

"What do you want of me?" he whispered, stripped of subterfuge. "What vows shall I say that will make you happy?"

"It doesn't matter. You wouldn't keep them. Remember what Glyncara said? She said she didn't think you could keep an oath. She was right."

"What oath have I made to you that I've broken?"

"You said you wouldn't hurt me." The tears rose again in her eyes. Her chin trembled, dimpling with the sorrow.

He reached out as if to touch them, then drew his hand back. "I didn't mean to." But he had, and he had a reason that she would never understand. That he, despite all his power, was terrified to tell her.

"I need you."

"You don't need anyone."

"I need you to hold the demons in check. Without you, I become something all together darker than what I am with you to make me try and be better."

Truth again. Naked truth that left him cold and shuddering and wishing desperately he were anywhere else but here, baring his soul on a cold, miserable northern street. And she rebuffed him at every turn. She shattered his arguments and made him seem trivial and childish. He looked away from her, hair sticking to his face. Wetness on his lashes made him blink. She reached up and touched his cheek, eyes wide in wonderment.

"Is this a tear?"

"Its snow." He murmured.

She rubbed it between her fingers. "You lay the welfare of the world on my shoulders, do you? I'm the buffer between it and your good behavior?"

"I didn't say that."

"Didn't you?"

"I love you."

She sighed. "I know. I just don't understand the ways you show it in."

"Don't let me get away with it."

"As if I could stop you."

"You could."

She looked down at the snow covered stone between their feet. "I don't know what to do, Rushie."

"Forgive me."

"I'm confused. I'm so confused I can't think straight."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Let me make it better."

She stood there, shoulders haunched, shifting from foot to foot. Her face was pale and her lips devoid of color. "I'm cold." It was a tiny little whimper. A miserable little admission. She stepped towards him, defeated or victorious, he wasn't sure which, and he wrapped her in his arms and in a cloud of heat that melted the snow on the street in a ten foot radius about them.

"Don't do it again." She said against his shoulder. "Don't hurt me again."

"Never. I promise."

"Don't promise. Just don't do it."

There was no arguing with that. He just nodded, elated, relieved, terrified of what would happen when this baby was born and Mother tried to collect.

"And apologize to Kall."

"What?"

"He didn't want to keep the baby a secret, but I made him promise. He was only protecting me."

"I will not." Indignation rose like a flash flood to wash away dread.

"Then you and I are going to be at odds, I swear." She shifted to look sternly up at him. There were still traces of tears in her eyes. He met her glare, gauging how serious she was in that declaration. He decided she was very serious. The vision of facing off against the pregnant woman to whom he had just bared his soul and declared his undying love almost made him laugh. He did laugh. He pressed her face against his shoulder and carried her into the air back towards the dawn silhouetted bulk of Kall-Su's castle. In light of this monumental achievement, one could be a little magnanimous with one's forgiveness.

[ NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath32.htm



	32. Chapter 32

aftermath32

**Thirty-two**

Gara's head hurt. His shoulders ached, the muscles in his back felt as though they had each and every one been ripped out, stomped on and haphazardly stuffed back into place. People were being very, very loud, inconsiderate of his pounding head. The maids were buzzing with speculation. Kall-Su's housekeeper was complaining bitterly about the disregard men in general had for women's feelings and welfare. Captain Kiro and the house guard were mulling about, clanking of weapons and armor, wanting badly to do something about the dishonor placed upon their lord and castle. Kall wasn't saying anything, other than initially and sternly prohibiting Kiro from sending anyone out into the streets after Schneider, thus effectively saving lives.

Gara prodded at the egg sized lump on the back of his skull, wincing at the sharp little stab of pain that contact brought. There was no blood. Not anymore. There was blood on the wall where he had hit. His connection with the Murasume blade had always sped the recovery of his injuries. It was a symbiotic relationship of sorts. It drew life force and power from him at times and in return it kept its bearer in exceptionally good health. Though not enough to banish the aches and pains. Ten years ago and he would have had little discomfort to complain about. He should have been quick enough to see it coming and avoid it. Ten years or thirty minutes ago he should have expected Schneider to strike out at such an intrusion. His own fault for letting surprise make him rash.

He was in Kall's study, the closest large room on the floor with a chair for him to sit down in and enough room for Kiro to pace about and fret. Kall looked out the window, his back to the confusion that had entered his private sanctum. Keitlan had said, when she had been fussing over the his head, that Kall and Schneider had been ready to fight. Gara wondered if she knew what such a fight would consist of. Of what such a clash would do to this castle and this city. She couldn't know. Not if she mentioned it so casually, as if a fight between wizards was as simple as a fight between sailors in a seaside bar.

Kall knew. Kall had to be fretting over the welfare of his city if they had a vengeful and irrational Schneider to deal with.

A maid came running into the study, skidding to a stop before Keitlan and curtsying frantically before blurting out. "The door's back up on lady Yoko's room. Nobody put it up. Its sealed there like somebody melted it to the frame and it can't be budged. It's hot to the touch. Its not natural." As if anything in this whole situation was.

Kall turned around. Gara lifted a brow.

"Well," Gara said. "Personally, I'm not for kicking down any more doors on him. If they're back and she's not screaming bloody murder, let her deal with him. She does it better than the rest of us."

The guard were staring questioningly at their lord. Keitlan was frowning mightily. Kall waved a hand and said quietly. "Leave it. Go back to your beds, all of you."

"But, my lord ---" Keitlan complained.

"I said leave it."

She looked distressed, but did not argue further. She left the study, the last to heed her lord's orders. Gara sighed, rubbing his neck and not quite able to work out the kink.

"I don't understand him." Kall said quietly, when they were alone. "Is he playing some game?"

"You ask me? My head hurts too much to try and figure how his mind works. He never did make sense."

"He went to such efforts to abandon her and now ---"

"Now, he's changed his mind. Worse than a woman." Gara sniffed. "I was complaining the other day that being snowed in here was getting boring. Remind me to never wish boredom away again, will you?"

She sat with her knees to her chest with a quilt wrapped about her, before the roaring fire in her room. He leaned against the wall next to it, one boot on the wall, his face half obscured by hair. With sorcery he had sealed the window against the freezing cold outside, and the door inside against intrusion to their privacy. Their conversation was halting and uncertain after the truce. She told him about her desolation, her bereavement and the budding joy of the child that grew within her. He admitted to being able to think of little else but her from almost the moment he had made the ill fated decision to separate from her. He admitted to remorse over her pain, which astounded her. He never felt guilt. She hadn't thought he was capable of it. She asked him about Arshes -- what state he had left her in -- and he looked away, honest strife on his face. Honest, torn emotion that she could not fault him for.

She could not, at this moment, summon up the energy to do more than stare into the fire and listen to the crackle of flames, and the sound of his voice when he spoke. She was numb. Part of her cried out not to trust him, to shun him as he'd shunned her, but that wasn't a part close to her heart. Those warmer places swelled with relief that he had come back for her. Those places close to her heart were convinced that his repentance was for real.

Her head drooped and her fingers loosened their grip on her blanket. She snapped to drowsy awareness, shifting the quilt.

Schneider bent over her, whispered at her ear. "Go to sleep, Yoko." And swept her up, blanket and all to carry her to her disarrayed bed. She half struggled, not sure of his intentions. He laid her down and when she stared warily up at him, he merely shook his head and said.

"I should have waited until day to find you. I'm sorry I robbed you of sleep."

He looked as if he had not seen it himself in quite a while. She wondered how long he had ridden without stop to reach her. Knowing him and the information that goaded him, he probably had not stopped at all. She sighed and relaxed into her pillows, shut her eyes and was asleep.

She woke up to light coming in from the shimmering seal about the window. For a while she lay, with pleasant warmth at her back, her mind a still fuzzy from sleep, trying to put a name to the oddness in the room. She faced the door. Which was splintered and gouged and merged most unnaturally to the abused frame about it. There were spidering cracks in the plaster on the wall around the door frame. Plaster and wood littered the carpet before the door.

She made to sit up, but there was a heaviness across her waist keeping her down. An arm encircled her. Her head rested comfortably on another. She twisted her head and looked into Schneider's face. She drew a sharp breath, everything coming back. And in the light of morning she was not so certain how she felt about it. About him. She could not stop staring at him. All tussled silver hair and black lashes fluttering on his cheeks. Oh, how she adored him when he was asleep. When he couldn't hurt her with words or promises or deeds. He was only dangerous when he was awake and aware. She might have laid here forever with him in slumber and been happy.

He opened his eyes when she was looking at him and smiled at her. A charming, sleepy smile that made the corners of her mouth curve up in response.

"Good morning." He murmured.

That remained to be seen. A great many things remained to be seen.

"Are you sorry yet? To have forgiven me?" he inquired.

"I don't remember saying that I had." She responded.

He did not reply to that. His eyes fixed on hers, searching for the key to her thoughts. She lowered her lashes to keep it from him. Not ready yet to give him all her secrets. But she would give him one. One that they shared. She reached for the hand at her waist and drew it down between them, pressing it against her tummy where the life they had made resided.

"Our baby lives here." She said. He drew in breath. He looked a little spooked, a little unnerved. He drew his hand away after a moment and brought it up to her cheek. He touched his forehead to hers, a gesture of such affection that it made her forget his uneasiness at the mention of their child.

Her stomach growled, telling her that she had overslept her normal breakfast hour. The rest of the castle was probably already astir and no doubt salivating to know what had transpired behind her sealed bedroom door.

"If I don't get something to eat soon, I'm going to start gnawing on furniture. Perhaps you might undo the door." She said blandly and he arched a brow at her. He leaned over her and waved a finger at the door. The odd merging between shattered door and frame melted away and the door teetered, then toppled forwards into the room.

Which left little privacy for dressing, with her room open to the hall. So she merely pulled a sweater over her nightgown and a skirt over that. All of which Schneider watched as if she were performing some erotic dance for his benefit. It made her fell oddly embarrassed and elated. She had to wonder if he would react the same when she was waddling about like a house on legs.

"Well," she said when she was dressed. "Shall we go and face the multitudes?"

He shrugged.

"You will be civil and you will be contrite. You promised."

"Civil maybe." He said. She turned and fixed him with a narrow glare. He pretended to look elsewhere.

"And you'd better hope Gara's all right."

"He is."

"Hummpph." She marched out of the room and he followed. A chamber maid saw them, stopped in the middle of the hall, then turned and scampered off the way she had come. A guard came up the hall and Yoko smiled cheerfully at him, taking Schneider's arm in hers to assure no one got the wrong idea.

"Good morning." She nodded.

The guard nodded back warily, stood against the wall and let them pass, then fell in a few yards behind them. Schneider cast an amused glance back.

"Oh, charming. An escort."

Down stairs to the main hall. There were a few guardsmen at the tables. A few ninja sitting around their master who occupied one of the high backed cushioned chairs near the hearth. Keitlan was fussing about Gara. She stopped in mid-finger shake to stare at Yoko and Schneider, open mouthed. Yoko disengaged herself from his arm and hurried forward to confront Gara.

"Are you all right?"

The master ninja waved a hand at Keitlan. "Mistress Keitlan was just inquiring about that herself. I'm fine. He pulled the punch." His eyes went past her to Schneider, who inclined his head and shrugged.

Keitlan put her hands on her hips and looked disapprovingly at Schneider. Every set of eyes in the hall was staring at him.

"So this is the father." The house keeper said, disdain dripping from her voice. Yoko blushed, glancing back to him. He did not seem offended. He merely lifted a brow and pulled out a chair for Yoko at Gara's table.

"That I am." He agreed, sitting down himself next to Yoko.

"Oooh, well fine of you to show up after all the pain you caused the poor girl."

"Keitlan." Yoko pleaded softly, "Please, could I have some breakfast. I'm starved."

"No doubt. Running about in the night. And in your condition." She cast one more dark glare at Schneider, who lifted his lips in a predatory smile in retaliation, then turned to snap at one of the gawking serving girls to run and fetch food.

"So here you are." Gara said, turning a mug in his big hands.

"Here I am. Cold and miserable a place though it be."

"Its not so bad." Gara said. "Better since Yoko got her hands on it."

"Cold and miserable, no matter what face you put on it. What do you mean since Yoko got her hands on it?"

"Oh, I just helped with a little redecorating." She said shyly. Gara snorted. He looked as if he wanted to say something but held it back. Keitlan sat a mug of milk down before Yoko and with considerably more force slammed a mug of amber ale before Schneider. It sloshed over the sides and onto the table. She gave him a look, just to make sure he knew she hadn't done it by accident, then moved aside so the maid could lay heaping plates of eggs fried with vegetables and meat, potatoes, fried apples and bread before them.

"So, where is Arshes." Gara finally asked, voice light, but eyes intense under his lashes. Schneider shrugged between mouthfuls.

"Keladedra, probably."

"Probably? You don't know?"

Schneider cast him an irritated look. "She does what she wishes. I'm not her keeper."

"Not anymore." Gara muttered.

"Who is this Arshes?" Keitlan demanded, hovering behind the table. "The woman he left poor lady Yoko for?"

"Does everyone know everything here?" Schneider asked in exasperation.

"As if there's not a clear enough explanation for a grieving woman with child. You ought to be ashamed to show your face."

"Mistress Keitlan! That will be enough!"

Kall-Su strode into the hall, captain Kiro on his heels, impeccably dressed in stern blue and black. The housekeeper blushed, bit her lip in consternation and retreated to the hearth where her girls were seeing to the seasoning of the mid-day stew. He stopped at the end of the table, expressionless. Schneider leaned back in his chair and stared at him.

"Am I to expect anymore destruction to my castle, or are you done with that?"

Schneider smiled blindingly, which made Yoko uneasy. She kicked his ankle under the table to remind him of his manners.

"I'm done. But you never know. The cold makes me cranky."

Yoko kicked him harder. He moved his foot out of her range.

"Oh, by the way, I'm told I was unbearably rude last night and that I ought to be remorseful for it. I'm sure you understand the depths to which I regret it."

Kall's lashes fluttered down. He was not immune to the irony in Schneider's tone. Anyone who knew him wouldn't be.

"This is a dreadful, drafty monastery you have here, Kall. I'll never understand why you picked such a comfortless place to call home." He got a number of dark looks from men at arms and servants for that comment.

"I'm sorry it does not meet with your approval."

"Hummm." He tore the crust off a piece of bread and popped it into his mouth, still watching Kall-Su. "Don't just stand there like an idiot. Sit down."

Kiro's lips clenched in anger, most upset by the disrespect given his lord, but wise enough not to call Schneider on it. Kall himself did not evidence irritation. Not in the set of his face at any rate. His eyes were shuttered by the gold tipped fringe of his lashes. He moved around the table to put out a chair opposite Schneider.

"I hardly expected to see you here after --- our last conversation."

"I changed my mind."

"Indeed. If Yoko is agreeable to this change in your mood, then I have no dissension with it."

Schneider lifted a brow caustically. "You can't imagine how much relief I feel to hear that. I would hate to have -- dissension with you, Kall. And after you were so very forthright with me."

"Rushie." Yoko smiled at him tightly. "Play nice, please."

He blinked at her innocently. "I thought I was being nice. Civil. Wasn't that what you asked for?"

She looked across the table to Kall, who was beginning to look a bit doleful at Schneider's acerbity. "He's just snappy because he hasn't had much sleep the last few weeks."

"And I hate all this endless snow." Schneider added.

"How did you travel across the mountains?" Kall asked. "The passes are all snowed in."

"I noticed. I made a new one."

"A new one?"

"A new pass." Schneider waved a hand airily in a southerly direction. "The old ones were intolerable. I was in a hurry."

"You made a new pass?" Kiro repeated his lord. "How did you ---?"

Schneider just stared at him.

"Are you saying, you blasted a new pass through the great northern range?" Kall said, with slightly widened eyes.

"Are the lot of you deaf and dumb?"

"You made a large, easily traveled pass through the mountains at a time when there is a possible army out there with aggressive intentions towards anything connected with you?"

Schneider shrugged. "Without Angelo, Larz isn't stupid enough to strike against me. The only people stupid enough to do that it seems are sitting about this table."

Gara laughed. Kall chewed on the inside of his cheek, not convinced.

"Perhaps, my lord, we should send out men to watch this new pass he has made." Kiro suggested warily. Kall nodded, waving a hand to indicate he do it now. The captain spun on his heels and marched towards the doors at the end of the hall.

"You worry too much." Schneider said.

"You don't worry enough." Gara replied, since Kall wouldn't respond to the complaint.

Dark Schneider had taken up residence in Kall's castle as if it were his own. Oh, he was not particularly imperious to anyone other than Kall himself -- old habits died hard -- but he most definitely acted as if he were certain he were the center of this particular universe. His moods and sulks were by far more important than anyone else's, with the possible exception of Yoko. His entertainment more pressing than the entire functioning of a city. His complaints more dire than any one else's. It was all familiar. Kall had spent a lifetime dealing with it and did not particularly mind the moods or the ego. He did not appreciate the wit being practiced upon his person, especially in the presence of others; that little penchant disturbed his sense of honor, but there was no more help for it now than there had been years past. Schneider did what Schneider pleased. And when Schneider was bored, which he claimed constantly to be here, snowed in in Sta-Veron, Schneider had to find things to entertain himself.

Yoko might have helped the situation greatly, had she extended her forgiveness to the bedroom. She had not as of yet, invited him to join her in her recently repaired room. Keitlan, in her general disapproval of him, had seen him placed in rooms of his own all the way across the castle from Yoko's. His abstinence from Yoko also seemed to include every other woman in the city. It seemed a condition of her good will, which amazed Kall to no ends, since Schneider had never curbed his outrageous flirting for any other living creature.

He had wondered into Kall's library a few times, while Kall was at his books, and drifted about the book lined shelves, trailing his fingers over the spines of books, pausing to read a title here and there. He did not exactly make Kall nervous, but he did make him excruciatingly aware of his presence. There was no concentration while he was on the prowl.

"Come across any new spells of the ancients in all this?"

"A few." Cautiously. Wizards, even friendly ones, were not generous creatures when it came to the sharing of spells. "I've been more interested in the lore of the very old world, before man civilized it with his technology. I was intrigued by your stories of this Mother and the lady of the forest."

Schneider glanced thoughtfully over his shoulder at him. "And what have you found?"

"There are so few books that have references to those old magics. A lot of myth which is often hard to separate from the fact."

"Par for the course."

"There are many references to forest deities and spirits in what is called -- Celt, myth. I thought I might go south during the spring and see if I could find any books dealing more with that culture."

"Celtic? Fairy circles, toadstools, banshees and the like. Waste of time more than likely. But make yourself happy. You found no reference to Mother?"

"Not even an obscure one. Perhaps you might give me more details of the entity."

Schneider looked out the window, frowning. "I think _entity _ is too small a term for it. It may very conceivably be a collective of entities, rather than one single being."

"And its orientation?"

"I don't think it has one, other than the welfare of the earth. I think it would do -- whatever was necessary to further its own capacity to protect -- or maybe nurture the earth."

"Is it a extension of the world, or a separate being?"

"I don't know. The first, I think. And if not then its connection is so strong that whatever state it is in, the earth will reflect and vice versa. I wish it were otherwise."

"Why?"

"Because then I could kill it."

Kall stared at him, wide eyed. "I don't understand. It freed you."

Schneider did not answer. He stared out the window with such a look of rancor that the clouds themselves seemed to turn pale and hurry on across the sky. He refused to speak more on the subject and wondered away not long after.

The next morning, when Kall had finished breakfast in his chambers and walked on his way to the library, Schneider whisked up beside him, draping an arm across his shoulders.

"We're going out."

Kall looked up at him warily, getting steered past the door to his library against his will and down the hall towards the stairs. "I had wanted to finish a passage I was reading-" he tried to explain.

"You read too much. See what my being gone has done to you? Turned you into a book worm."

He could not imagine what was so alluring outside that Schneider had to drag him out to see it. But through the hall and out the main doors they went. The sky was clear of clouds and the air had a fresh, almost warm sparkle to it. Ice and snow glinted in the sunlight. One had to wonder if this suspiciously spring like day had been induced by means other than natures.

Kall cast a skeptical glance to Schneider. "You didn't --"

"Not even a little. It did it all on its own." He grinned happily and tromped down the steps and onto the muddy ground of the yard. There were horses saddled and waiting and quite a few white garbed men who Kall recognized as being Gara's ninjas. Gara himself strode up from the direction of the stable, all in white, with the murasume blade on his back and a grin of anticipation on his broad, scarred face.

"Good god, you dragged him out. I would have placed money against it."

"Against me? Are you a complete fool?"

"Never proven." Gara was in fine spirits. Schneider was practically bursting with them. Kall had no notion what had the two of them in such a jovial mood, save the dubious occurrence of a warm winter's day.

"What exactly are the two of you about?" Kall asked, looking askance at horses and ninjas.

"War games." Schneider said with glee. "We're going to go and destroy things."

"Which things, exactly?"

"Nothing of yours. You and Gara and his ninjas against me."

"I'm not dressed for this."

Schneider rolled his eyes and a heavy fur lined white cloak appeared out a thin air. A Sartor spell. Schneider's favorite waste of energy.

"Look at it this way, you get to take out all your frustrations at me."

"I don't want to take out any frustrations on you."

"Oh, you are such a bad liar, Kall." He got pushed towards a horse. Gara was already up and reining his mount in a tight circle about the yard. There was really no fighting it. Gara had obviously been telling Schneider about the wargames he and his ninja had been holding in the snowy wilderness outside Sta-Veron. He climbed up into the saddle. The stable master had been kind enough to saddle the chestnut he had favored of late. The horse snorted and paced about in excitement over the company of all the other horses.

Kall knew to shield his eyes against the sudden flare of sun on boundless snow. But several of the ninja cursed, snowblinded when they left the gates of Sta-Veron. They rode towards the woods to the north.

"So what is the object of this wargame we are to play?" He asked when Gara and Schneider rode beside him.

"Simple." Gara said. "I've sent one of my men ahead with two flags. We're red, he's black. Find the enemy flag and keep it before he gets ours and we win. The rules are. No flight spells. No killing my men --" He gave Schneider a pointed stare. "No calling elementals for help in finding the flags. We've got to do it on our own."

"Oh, lovely. Sounds like a wonderful way to pass the time."

Yoko sat on a stool in the kitchen, where it was warmest in all the castle, and where today, the back door was open to let in the sunshine and the fresh air. She was putting garland on a tray of pastries. The cook and Keitlan were kneading dough for the mornings baking. The castle was pleasantly quiet today, what with a good portion of the castle guard gone to inspect the new southern pass with captain Kiro and the resident wizards out with Gara's ninja to play wargames in the woods.

"So," Keitlan said, her hands rhythmically turning the dough. "Have you decided yet, whether to forgive him?"

Yoko was well used to the woman's bluntness by now and only blushed at the most indelicate questions. "Who's to say I haven't? He's here, isn't he?"

"As if your mere wanting it would keep that one away if he chose not to be. If you'd forgiven him, you'd have let him into your bed by now."

Yoko did blush at that.

"I wouldn't keep him from mine." The fat old cook remarked.

"He'd run screaming from your bed, Marge." Keitlan laughed. Yoko half smiled at the vision.

"Can't I forgive him and not sleep with him?"

"Man like that?" Keitlan sniffed. "Not likely, girl. If it were that easy, you'd probably not be in this state now. I don't much like the way he treats my lord, and I'd take a stick to him if I could for what he did to you, but I've got to admit that he'd be a hard one to turn away when he sets those eyes on a body or blinds a woman with that smile."

"And powerful." Old Marge added. "There's something about a man who flaunts power and its no hollow boast."

Yoko knew all this without having to be told. She thought about it daily. She was not mad at him anymore. She had not the nature to hold a grudge. Her forgiveness did not have strings attached. But she did have a desire not to be burned again, after surviving the first searing pain of his betrayal. She wanted to be near him, but she hesitated abandoning herself to the euphoria sexual contact would bring. That left her too open to be hurt again.

"I don't see why sex is so important anyway." She grumbled. "Why does everything have to come down that that? It was wonderful, but I could live very well without it, if I had to."

Both Keitlan and Marge laughed, as if they knew something she did not.

"Oh, Yoko. You are naive, aren't you." Keitlan said, when she'd caught her breath. "Men and women are two different breeds of animal. Of course We could do just fine without ever a man in our beds again, save for the warmth on a cold night. But to hear them talk, they'd die if they didn't get their regular portion. It's more important to them than the food they eat. If you want to keep a man, you cater to his needs and keep him happy in the bedroom."

"That's ridiculous. I know plenty of men who don't have to have sex all the time. Why father never had it. Well, at least he didn't after mother died." She amended, blushing at the mere mention of her father and sex.

"Girl, your father is a priest. They don't count. Your wizard is no priest."

"I thought you didn't like him."

"I didn't say that I did."

"Then why are you pushing me to let him into my bed?"

Keitlan put a flour covered hand to her chest. "Me? I was just explaining the nature of men to you."

"If you don't want him, I'll take him." Marge cackled, slapping a loaf of dough into a pan.

Yoko sighed. "I want him. I'm just afraid."

"And what about this other woman he went off with?"

"Arshes Nei."

"Does he love her?"

"He raised her. He does love her and I wouldn't ask that he stop -- even if I could - just to placate my fears. She loved him before I was even born. It just seems so unfair."

"You're not willing to step aside and let her have him are you?"

"Years ago, maybe I was. She was so intense in her feelings for him -- it intimidated me. If -- if he meant what he said to me, then no, I wouldn't just step aside. I don't know what I'd do. I wish she loved Gara as much as he loved her. Then we wouldn't have this problem."

"Lord Gara loved this woman too?" Keitlan's brows rose in interest. "Oh ho, this just grows more and more entertaining."

"Its not entertaining." Yoko said vehemently.

"No, not for you, dear." Keitlan patted her hand, leaving a powdery smudge. "But for the rest of us -- the staff hasn't been so excited in years. We've never been so happy since lord Kall-Su brought you here."

"Oh, that's just great." Yoko huffed. But it felt good to know that she was wanted.

There was a commotion from the main hall. The voices of men raised in alarm. Keitlan dropped her dough and dusted her hands on her apron, hurrying for the kitchen door. Yoko followed, curious, for it was too soon for the wargames to have ended. There were city guard in the main hall, and castle men at arms.

"What is this ruckus?" Keitlan demanded wading into the midst of them fearlessly.

"Where is lord Kall-Su?" Demanded one of the city guard.

"Out, as if its any of your concern." The housekeeper said smartly. "What business do you have?"

"Then captain Kiro."

"He's gone as well. Spit it out man."

There was a whispered pause as the men looked amongst themselves, shifting uneasily, then one of the guardsmen dumped a burlap sack on the floor and from it rolled three severed heads. Yoko drew breath, bringing a hand to her mouth. Keitlan gasped.

"Get those horrid things off my floor." She screeched. "What do you think you're doing, bringing those here?"

"They were left at the city gates." The guard said tightly. "And six more bags like them. Bandits left them with this." He held out a blood stained parchment. Keitlan refused to take it. The man told her what it said. "These are the heads of the townsfolk of Thelda. They were killed in retaliation for the execution of the marauders captain Kiro caught in the God's Tooth range last week. They say there will be more."

Keitlan nodded, finally taking the missive gingerly in her fingers. "Get those out of here. Give them the treatment honest men deserve. Send someone out to find Lord Kall-Su and tell him what happened." She glanced back to Yoko. "You shouldn't be here, lady. This is no sight for your eyes."

Yoko shook her head, sniffling back bile and tears. "I've seen worse. Much, much worse."

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath33.htm



	33. Chapter 33

aftermath33

**Thirty-three**

Kall hit the ground with enough force to drive the shield he had up around him six feet under snow and dirt. He splintered trees with the impact and the snow melted from the combustive energy of the attack.

He'd had the black flag in his sights. Up a tree that he had no intention of climbing and instead created enough ice formation on the high up limb to make it crack and fall to the ground, bringing the flag with it. Which had been, he'd thought, an end to the not completely unenjoyable game until the Zako-Damero spell hit him. Granted, it had not been at full strength, but the residue energy of the thing was damned uncomfortable. He could hear Schneider laughing, all too pleased with his timely save of his black flag. It was not hard to track him. All one had to do was follow the skid mark Kall's shield had left and it pointed a straight line to the enemy flag and the hence the enemy who had gone to retrieve it.

_Sasarix Codalla-Lorotus._ He spoke the incantation, filled with a sudden determination not to let Schneider get his flag quite so easily. A great howling wind swept through the wood -- one could only hope none of the ninja were about -- and seemed to snatch up every bit of snow, rock and not unfirmly attached piece of wood and hurl it with hurricane force towards the annoying laughter. That stopped it. He climbed to his feet, dripping melted snow and mud, thoroughly disgusted at the_ great fun,_ Gara and Schneider had insisted this divertissement would be.

He took a step forward. Every tree standing was coated with a thick layer of blown snow and debris. Fire burst out of a particularly large lump of it in the center of the path, fanning out in a spiracle globe that melted snow and singed wet bark and pine needles. Schneider burst out, clutching the black flag triumphantly in his hand.

"Take it if you can." He taunted. Kall narrowed his eyes, waved a finger and the soaked flag froze solid in Schneider's fingers.

"Ow." Schneider yelped, the freeze stinging his hand where he held the flag. He dropped it and it hit the ground, shattering into a hundred tiny, frozen black pieces of cloth. He glared at Kall. "The object was to take the flag, not destroy it. You really don't play very well. But, hey, it means all I have to do is get yours and I win."

He waggled his fingers and a sheet of wind, static with electricity swirled up between them. Kall shielded his eyes with a hand, not bothering with a shield since the maelstrom was not directed at him. When it was gone, so was Schneider. Fine. Let him plague Gara for a while.

He went looking for his horse, which had fled to who knew where once the air was rent with magic. Horses in general had a distaste for things of arcane nature. Wise creatures. He used a little spell to banish the dirt and water from his clothing as he walked. His horse had stopped its mad fight across the forested hill and stood watching him warily as he stomped through snow up to his knees to reach it. He patted its thick furred neck reassuringly and its ears twitched while it decided whether to forgive him for the fright or not. It decided on forgiveness after a little scratching under the forelock and pushed at his shoulder with its wet, dirty muzzle. It had been ferreting under the snow for edible bits of greenery.

He had ridden a little ways towards the edge of the forest when he felt the trimmer of magic in the air and heard the not too distant boom of explosive power. The ground trembled a little and the horse tossed its head uneasily. He calmed it with a pat and the pressure of his knees. Gara, he thought, releasing the power of the Murasume blade. Then a return volley and the sky through the foliage lit up briefly. He came out of the trees and into a whirlwind of snow and energy. He saw glimpses of ninja springing for cover in the trees. If Gara had appropriated the red flag, Kall couldn't see it on his person, but Schneider was in the midst of overwhelming him all the same.

One couldn't very well sit there and watch one's side be routed and not do something about it. He whispered the first lines of an incantation, deciding how he would direct the spell when it came to fruition. It was much harder to play at battle than it was to engage in the real thing. One had to curb the deadliness of spells and still defeat an enemy and that was a frustrating dilemma. He brought his hands together and wove a symbol in the air. Faint lines of luminescence trailed in the path his fingers made. The air coalesced between Schneider and Gara, rebuffing the last strike made by the Ninja Master with neat efficiency. It thickened and thickened, creating a wall that snaked around the spot on which Schneider stood. He was obscured by the hardening layers. It was a conical barrier of ice and energy pulled from the air itself. One could almost feel the moisture being sucked out of the air. It was open at the top and if Schneider chose to ignore the rules of the contest, he could have levitated out. Flames spilled over the rim, some twenty feet high, instead, eating away at the prison from within. It kept forming from the outside, growing in diameter as it did.

Kall rode towards Gara, still concentrating on the spell. "Do you have the damned flag?"

"Ours yes. Did you find his?"

"Yes."

"Do you have it?"

"No."

"Does he have it?"

"No."

Gara lifted both brows at him skeptically. "You're having a hard time grasping the concept of this game, aren't you?" He thrust the red flag at Kall with a grin. "Here you hold it, you've got better defenses than I do."

Kall really didn't want it.

His eye caught movement from the south. A rider was coming up the path from Sta-Veron at a fast pace. The wall of ice suddenly shattered outwards, overcome by tremendous force from within. Shards flew in all directions, pelting snow and trees and men. Gara sliced a chunk with the Murasume and staggered back a step as smaller pieces hit him. Kall threw up a shield to protect them both, but was distracted enough by the rider to let it down after the initial spray of shrapnel ceased.

"My Lord." The rider called out.

Force hit him from the side. Not magical, he might have sensed that, but pure physical impact that knocked him out of the saddle and into the snow with not inconsiderable weight pressing him down into the white. Schneider leered down and Gara got knocked back by a wave of concussive energy when he came to help. Kall got an arm across the throat and the flag ripped out of his fingers.

"Mine." Schneider crowed triumphantly. He had the advantage of leverage and Kall couldn't quite manage to throw him off.

"Surrender?" Schneider demanded, pressing down. It was always a question of dominancy with him. Always a matter of impressing upon all the world and most importantly those closest to him that he was Alpha male. Leader of the pack of his making. Even his grin was wolfish. Kall did the only thing he could to get Schneider off him quickly and painlessly. He admitted defeat.

"You win. Get off."

Schneider laughed, rolling off and holding up the red flag in childish glee. The rider had come to a startled halt not far from them, staring at the ravaged land and the snow covered wizards with a white, shocked face. Gara came limping over, brushing snow from his hair.

"Lord Kall-Su." The rider swallowed, then drew breath and blurted out. "Marauders have attacked a village in the north in retaliation for the execution of their brethren. They left the heads of the villages at our gates."

"They did what?" Gara sputtered. Kall shut his eyes for a moment in consternation, fighting back a cold anger that made his fists clench. He sent troops to the south to guard against danger from that direction and it came in the form of vengeful bandits from the north. Bandits had always been a thorn in the side of honest towns and villages, but they had never dared to cast so blatant a challenge at the doorstep of the Ice Lord.

"Which village?" he asked.

"Thelda, my lord."

Thelda was a four day ride at best from Sta-Veron.

"When were these --gifts left for me?"

"Only this afternoon. The gate guards saw no one."

Which only meant that the bandits were good at their profession. But they could not have ridden far. If they were northern bandits then they would have ridden back towards the north. They might even have passed the pointless game Gara and Schneider insisted he engage in.

"Go back and see that the guard is doubled along the walls of Sta-Veron. Send a troop of men to Thelda to see what help might be given, if there are any left alive to help."

"Yes, my lord. And you. What shall I say you do, my lord? Mistress Keitlan and Lady Yoko were disturbed greatly by the message."

He glanced to Gara and Schneider. "Tell them we look for the marauder's trail."

"Better done from the air." Schneider said, when the rider had taken off again for Sta-Veron.

"Yes." Kall agreed grimly. "They would ride towards the mountains to the north. That is where they nest."

"Okay." Schneider uttered the words to a Raven spell and rose from the earth, cloak billowing about him. "This is better than war games." He remarked and was off over the forest and flying northward.

Kall didn't think so. Kall thought it was infinitely worse.

"I wish they'd come back." Yoko stood on the crenelated roof of the highest tower of Kall-Su's castle, bundled for cold weather, staring northward through a faint speckling of snow. "Or at least send word."

Keitlan stood beside her, shifting uncomfortably, looking highly uncomfortable at the sheer height of the tower. She stood well away from the edge and the sharp drop. The tower was at the back of the castle and itself helped form the northern wall of the city. Below - far far below -- was a snow covered rocky crevice. Yoko looked over the edge and Keitlan complained bitterly about the recklessness of the young.

"Men out hunting bandits don't have the time to send comforting messages." The house keeper said sagely. "They've other things on their minds."

"Its been five days. You'd think -- considering how much wizardly power they have at their beck and call -- they'd have caught a band of mere bandits already."

"Wizards or no, bandits are a sneaky lot. They'll know every hidey hole between here and the Northern Tundra. Will you come down from here now?"

With a sigh, she did. The stairs leading down were narrow and circled the wall of the tower. She could touch either wall with her hands as she climbed down. The stones were cold to the touch. Even in the stairwell her breath frosted in the air. Keitlan said another storm was on its way. Yoko was sorry to hear that, having enjoyed the short spurt of sunshine. She thought Schneider would be miserable out in the weather with a winter storm raging about him. She rather wanted him back where she could lay hands on him if she wished, chide him for his acid wit or his strutting ego, or just sit and watch him. No wonder she had been so miserable her first month here. It was one thing to miss him when she knew he would come back to her, and quite another when she thought she might never see him again.

She shed her winter cloak in her room, and warmed her hands and feet at the fire. Then she went downstairs to the hall to sit with the women while they did their sewing and mending and gossiped among themselves. She knew that when she was not present a fair deal of their gossip centered around her. She did not mind. They weren't spiteful as a general rule, not like the ladies at court in Meta-Rikan. They rather liked her, she thought. She liked them, plain, simple women, the wives of men-at-arms, the women who worked for a living in their lord's castle. They were by far more honest than the rich ladies of the court she had known.

She was sitting among them, stitching a patch over someone's tunic, when one of the stable boys came hesitantly into the hall, searching out Keitlan.

"What is it, boy. Get your muddy feet off the rug."

"Mistress Keitlan. One of the gate guards escorted a lady to the castle gates. She says she's looking for --- for the dark wizard. Master Kelben told her he wasn't here so she asked for Lord Gara."

"And you told her he wasn't here as well, didn't you?" Keitlan said in exasperation.

"She said she'd wait."

Yoko's hands had frozen in their work. She stared at the needlework in shock, mind whirling with the certain suspicion of who such a lady might be.

"Well, she'll have a long wait if they don't come back before this storm. They're likely to be snowed in. See what she wants."

"She wanted to see his lordship's guests, lady." The boy said, as if Keitlan hadn't heard that the first time.

"Let her in." Yoko said softly. Keitlan looked at her questionably. Yoko shook her head. "She's more than likely come a long way. Let her in out of the cold."

Keitlan shrugged and waved the boy off. He scampered out of the hall, and not long after, the doors were opened again and he returned leading a heavily cloaked, hooded form. Gloved hands rose to push the fur lined hood back, revealing black hair and gracefully pointed ears. Some of the women murmured at the sign of elfin blood. Yoko just closed her eyes and tried to control the fear that hammered at her heart.

"And who might you be? A friend of lord Schneider and Gara?"

The dark head turned slowly, taking in the hall, finally resting on the housekeeper who had stood and walked towards her.

"I am." Soft voice, a flickering of amber eyes under thick lashes. Nervous to be here, then.

"Well, they're out chasing bandits with my lord Kall-Su and the fates only know when they'll get back."

The eyes swung past Keitlan and fixed on Yoko, who stared back with wide tremulous orbs of her own. "Arshes Nei." She said quietly and the women whispered, having heard that name in their discussions about Yoko and her affairs.

She rose, because she could see no other path for her to take, and inclined her head respectfully to the other woman. Arshes merely stared at her, unmoving. Under the cloak that dragged the floor was the glint of bone colored armor.

"Its bad weather for traveling." Yoko said, for lack of anything else to say. Arshes said nothing, never one for trivialities. Why are you here? Yoko wanted to cry, but she knew. She knew all to well.

"Well, Lady Nei." Keitlan said, her lips pressed tight in disapproval. "I'll be certain to let them know you were looking for them when they get back. Good day to you."

"All right." Arshes said, and turned to leave. There was such a look of uncertainty on her face, of disappointment and pain that Yoko's since of pity was pricked and badly so.

"Wait. Arshes, wait. Come in and sit by the fire. It's getting bitterly cold out and I've heard the inns are full of soldiers and trappers weathering the winter in the city." She could not picture Arshes Nei sleeping in a stable and that was likely the only space left what with the storm approaching.

"There's -- there's room here for you -- if you want to wait for their return."

The half-elf lowered her eyes, she shifted and one could hear the sounds of buckles and armor protesting. "I would not wish to impose on Kall-Su's hospitality."

Keitlan sniffed. Yoko cast the woman a warning glance. This was a lord of havoc standing in their hall and not a stable one from the look of her. "You wouldn't be. You know you wouldn't be. Keitlan, would it be too much trouble to make a room up for her?"

"Oh, hardly none at all." The woman said tightly.

Yoko's head was spinning. Her stomach rebelled. If she stopped to think what she was doing, she would start screaming at herself for being a fool. For inviting the woman Schneider had loved before he ever knew her, under this roof. But, for those very same reasons, how could she not? If that love was destined to take precedence over her own, then she could not stop it. Could not drive it away.

So there she stood, nervously babbling, while the women by the fire whispered behind their hands and the Thunder Empress stared at her as if she where some insect that she would just as soon squash as express gratitude for the charity. She didn't know of a sudden, whether she wanted Schneider to hurry back or stay indefinitely out in the wilderness.

"This is damned annoying." Schneider glared up at the sheets of driving white snow that obscured what should have been a daylight sky. Now there was nothing but gray and white and biting cold. He was tired of warming himself arcanely. He had been doing it a week straight now and it was starting to wear like a migraine pressure behind his eyes. When he let the spell slip away he was cold and miserable and quickly became cranky because of it. He didn't know how Gara and his ninja's tolerated it, not being creatures of the cold north. Kall, he understood. Kall had an affinity for cold and ice, just as he had an affinity for fire based things. The cold did not particularly bother Kall. Schneider hated it with a growing passion. He hated these northern mountains which made the southerly ones he had crossed getting to Sta-Veron look inviting and gentle in comparison. The God's Tooth range was a gaping, sharp toothed maw waiting to swallow any fool enough to tempt its heights. They weren't attempting the heights, they were barely in its foothills, but it was enough to sour Schneider on any desire to venture further up those slopes.

He was at the point where he could have cared less about the bandits they had been tracking over this desolate land. It had stopped being fun some days ago when the storm had hit. They almost had them. Kall promised they did, claiming that no mundane man could ascend into the range during such a storm. Which meant the marauders had to be holding up somewhere waiting for it to pass, which was what they should have been doing. But, no, they had to delve into the storm to find the hidey hole before the bandits could leave it and disappear up the mountain. So they were all out in the storm, looking for sheltered spots where a group of men might hide. If he found those unfortunate men, they were going to be so very sorry for inconveniencing him.

There was a broad ice filmed lake almost indistinguishable from the color of the air that sat at the foot of a tree studded rise. The upper half of the slope was camouflaged in snow and storm, making it unclear how high it rose. Across the lake there was a tiny flare of fire magic. He might not have felt it at all, had not he been thinking about recasting the warmth spell himself. It was weak and untrained, the efforts of someone with small talent and even less ability to use it correctly. But it was very obviously the efforts of a man. And none of the men who accompanied him had a talent for creating fire.

He rose from the saddle of his horse with a whispered spell and soared through the snow high enough above the lake to scan the expanse of shoreline. The spell had come from the shore, he was certain of it. A protected cave hidden among the rocks, or even a campsite nestled among the trees. No matter, he would find it.

There, he sensed the crackling life a flame amidst all the endless snow and was drawn to it. There was the dark opening of a cave overlooking the frozen surface of the lake. He sat down before it, dropping the shields that had been protecting him from the onslaught of snow. Flakes gathered in his hair, almost invisible against the silvery white strands. He stepped into the cave, having to bend just a little to clear the ceiling. There was a faint flickering light coming from within it. The smell of smoke and fresh blood; the low voices of men. He strode down the narrow mouth of the cave, avoiding obstacles in the near dark. A group of men, maybe six, sat around a fire. There was the newly gutted corpse of a young boar on the ground before the fire. They were working on skinning the thing, eager to get the meat over the fire. Schneider crossed his arms and stood at the edge of the light, wondering how long it would take them to realize they were not alone. He got bored with the game finally and added a little extra energy to the fire. It flared up like a jug of hard liquor had been dumped into it, spreading out to lick at feet and and hands too near it. There were yelps of surprise as men scrambled back. One of them backed almost into Schneider's legs. The man looked up. Schneider looked down and smiled.

"If you're going to make a fire. Make a fire." He parted with that bit of wisdom a moment before the small cave was filled with the sound of weapons being drawn and men uttering curses and threats. They were most certainly a surly, mean looking lot. Grizzled and heavily bearded, smelling of rancid foods and improperly cured skins. They were prickly with weapons, swords, axes, knifes, clubs with curved hooks attached to their ends, gloves with metal claws banded about the knuckles. A veritable sea of sharp, hurtful weapons aimed at him.

The first three to reach him simply exploded as if someone had planted bombs in their stomachs. Body parts spattered everything but Schneider who had deflected the mess from himself with a shield. The others were stupid enough to follow in the footsteps of their comrades and two of them passed out of this life in the same grisly manner as the others. The last merely lost the hand holding the spiked club. His cries of attack were suddenly reduced to screams of purest agony as he held a profusely bleeding stump to his chest.

Six of them. Six was certainly not the extent of a group that had taken out a village that Kall said had been home to more than forty folk. So the six were only the emissaries of a larger group that had probably never left the mountains. Not good. He did not wish to traipse further into the wilderness after bandits that were probably more elusive than these had been. What needed to be done, was impress upon the bandits to mend their ways. And one needed a spokesmen to carry the suggestion to his fellows. This fellow with the blood pumping from his stump would have to do.

"Let's cauterize that, shall we?"

Flesh began to sizzle, the screams grew more frantic. The man crumpled to his knees, on the verge of passing out. Schneider caught him by the back of the collar and dragged him out of the cave and down to the shore of the lake. Kall would probably have fits over this, but he didn't care in the face of all this miserable weather and the prospect of returning to the warmth of the castle.

He lifted the man off his feet and snarled into his face. "Do you know the trouble you've put me through? I'm sure you don't. I'm sure you have no notion of how perturbed I am to have to trek through this storm after you misbegotten, putrid, petty thieves. It was not a good thing you did, throwing heads at the gates of the Ice Lord's city. He is very upset about it. He has a strong sense of responsibility for the people who pledge him fealty, so he'll go to great efforts to keep it from happening again. I don't wish him to have to go to those lengths. I very much wish him and myself back under a decent roof with a decent fire burning and that will not happen unless I get your vow to hurry back to your fellows where ever they might be and let them know what will happen if I have to come back out here."

He dropped the bandit. The man hit the ground and landed on his rump, staring up with dark, slanted eyes filled with pain and fear.

"Don't you want to know what will happen?" Schneider asked when the bandit didn't. The man slowly shook his head, cradling his arm.

Schneider shrugged. "Well you're going to find out." He formed a triangle with his thumbs and forefingers and chanted the ancient words of an incantation. The bandit was too terrified to back away. It was no minor spell. He needed an impressive enough display for the man to witness that would scare him enough to spread the word fervently to his fellows that a great and angry power would descend upon them should they attempt another strike of retaliation against Kall-Su's people.

The surface of the lake began to crackle. A sheet of black energy began to swirl about the surface, gathering in an ever expanding sphere at the lake's center. He spoke the last word of the spell and light flared. A vortex of energy exploded outwards from the black sphere, thrashing the shore with enough backlash to bend and break trees. Schneider shielded himself and the hapless bandit. The man screamed and threw his arms over his face regardless as the lake evaporated and the clouds overhead were blown away by the force, leaving the sky a clear gray pallet in a large area over the lake. Or what had been the lake. There was nothing there now but a deep, muddy pit of earth where water had once been, but now steamed and hissed as the cold air come into contact with its superheated surface. The clouds rushed to fill the void they had been forced from. Schneider dusted his hands off and turned an expectant look to the petrified bandit.

"Well? Do we understand each other? Speak up, I don't have all day and neither do you. Lord Kall -Su will probably be here soon and he'll not be so inclined to let you go about your business as I."

"I -- I understand, my lord. There will be no further strikes. We won't bother you again, I swear it."

"Excellent. Go on then."

The bandit scampered off. Schneider forgot about him as soon as he disappeared and turned to survey his handiwork.

"What is this?" Kall-Su stared aghast at the great gaping pit that had once housed a lake. He stared at Schneider, who leaned against his horse, his cloak pulled tightly about him not far from the edge of the former lake.

"It's a big hole in the earth, Kall. What do you think it is?"

Kall clearly did not know what to think. There were ninja melting out of the forest, drawn out of their habitual hiding by curiosity to actually see the anomaly Schneider had wrought.

"Was there a reason -- or was it merely a impulse?" Gara kicked a rock down the now frozen mud at the side of the great cavity.

Schneider arched a brow at him. "The bandits are gone. At least the ones who dropped the heads on your doorstep, Kall."

"You found them?" Kall turned on him sharply. "You killed them?"

"Mostly."

"I needed them alive. At least long enough to tell me where their fellows winter camp is."

"Don't worry about it, Kall. I took care of it."

"How did you take care of it?" Gara wanted to know. Kall was frustrated enough to snap his mouth shut and glare silently.

"I let one of them live and explained in detail what would happen if they bothered anything of yours again." He gave Kall a look that clearly said he expected gratitude not glares.

"Hence the lake?" Gara deduced. "Your little way of getting the point across."

"It seemed to make an impression."

"I'm sure it did."

"They won't honor it." Kall said. "They don't think that way."

"Oh, you'd be surprised what a well placed fear can do. How do you think I molded the beast-men into an army all those years ago? Give me a little credit for being able to put the fear of Me into the minds a handful of bandits. So, now we can go back. You want to go back, don't you Gara?"

"I'm dying to get back."

"See, your outnumbered. I've solved your problem and now we're going to all go back to your nice warm castle and hibernate until the snow stops. The snow does stop, doesn't it?"

[ NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath34.htm



	34. Chapter 34

aftermath34

**Thirty-four**

Timidly, Yoko crept down the hall outside Arshes Nei's door. Keitlan had given her a room two doors down from Gara's. It did not escape Yoko's recollection the look on the house mistress's face when she had mentioned Gara's feelings for the Thunder Empress. Keitlan was nothing, if not indiscreet in her efforts of maneuvering the people under her master's roof.

What exactly she was doing outside that ominous door, Yoko was not quite certain. Arshes Nei had certainly not seen fit to say a word to her since her arrival some days past. She had hardly come from her room, save once, two days ago when she had burst out without an explanation to anyone and practically run out into the courtyard to stare northward as if she had heard something the rest of them were unaware of. Yoko did know shy she felt the desire to talk with the half-elf, save that for a while there, while Rushie had been gone, they'd had a sort of truce. Not quite friendship, but not rivalry either. That only came with Rushie being alive. She did not want to hate Arshes Nei. Even after the blatant disregard for her feelings that the Thunder Empress must have known was happening after the battle with Larz and Angelo. Yoko was not designed to carry hatreds. It ate at her soul to harbor malfeasance's and to know they were harbored against her. It bothered her to know there was someone in pain because of her. She could just slap Rushie for haphazardly instigating the whole tangled situation. Could he be satisfied with one woman? No. He had to go and court droves of them. Moron. She muttered a few more choice curses under her breath as she paced outside Arshes's room.

It was a trait of hers and a bad one, not to be able to keep her hands strictly on her own business. She felt the need to set all the world to rights, even if she got bruised for her efforts. Perhaps it was why Keitlan liked her so much, the woman having similar idiosyncrasies herself, if not quite so good natured. She rapped on the door. A quiet little knock that she almost hoped the Thunder Empress might not hear. That would get her off the hook.

But of course half elf hearing was sharper than that. The door opened without Yoko ever hearing steps taken towards it and Arshes Nei looked down on her with wary question. She wore the under garments one might with armor. Padded pants and a thick tunic that was unbelted over her torso. Yoko wondered if she had bothered to pack anything else in her journey here.

Arshes stood there, one hand on the door, waiting for Yoko to state her business. Yoko's mouth went dry and her mind blank.

"I -- I just wanted to make certain you were comfortable. That you didn't need anything?"

"I was not aware that you had taken the position as hostess to Kall-Su's guests."

"I haven't." Yoko replied quietly. "I just wondered."

"Did you? Was that the extent of your wondering?" Arshes eyes traveled down her body, lingering on her waist line which was beginning to noticeably thicken. The dark brows drew. The amber eyes flickered away, disturbed.

"No." Yoko admitted. "I just wanted you to know I'm not angry. I don't wish us to be enemies."

"Is there anything else we can be?"

"There must be." Yoko felt the nausea rising. The bottomless pit in her stomach that opened to spew out dread for an animosity she dearly did not wish. Arshes turned her eyes back to Yoko. She was calm and precise in her stare, a warlord who had never hesitated in the slaughter of any who opposed her. What was one reticent girl, who desperately wanted peace, to her?

"I made a mistake." Arshes said. "I should not have told him. You chose not to. He would not have come back to you if it were not for the child you carry. Does that make you happy? To know it wasn't you, but your child that drew him? I'll never carry a child of his -- fates know I would have by now if it were possible -- but he'll always love me for who I am."

Who he made you to be. Yoko thought, chin trembling. But she wouldn't say it. "He hurt you so much, you say mean things." She said quietly. "I understand. He hurt me too. But you're wrong. I'm sorry I came here."

"Why did you?"

"I wanted to make things better."

"Then go away and leave him to me."

As if she could. As if he would let her if she tried. She shook her head, miserably. Hopeless in this endeavor she had taken upon herself. She walked away from the door, clutching her hands to stop the shaking.

"I do not understand you." Arshes Nei said to her back. "I do not understand the things you do."

Neither do I. She kept on down the hall.

A clatter of hooves and the sound of many voices in the courtyard announced another arrival. This one greater by far than the last and accompanied by much excitement from men at arms and yard hands. Maids were scurrying about when Yoko came down the stairs, rushing about with purpose in their step.

"What is it? Are they back?" she asked, catching the eye of one girl.

"Yes lady. Just so."

Joy and dread pushed for dominance in her heart. She ran back up stairs to her room to grab a cloak, then pelted down the steps and through the main hall towards the courtyard. Men filled the yard, both returned travelers and home guards. She perched on the steps, looking for that unmistakable form amongst all the white clad ninja. There, beyond Kall-Su, who was talking with Captain Kiro, Gara and Schneider were laughing about something. She started down the steps, weaving through the shifting bodies towards them. She was almost upon them, when something made her turn her eyes back towards the castle. Arshes Nei had come out upon the steps and stood without benefit of cloak upon the top level, staring down into the courtyard, eyes fixed upon the path Yoko was taking.

As Yoko stared, those amber eyes narrowed, then arms encircled her from behind, lifting her neatly off her feet, swinging her around into an embrace that took her breath away. He hardly gave her a chance to catch it before he kissed her. And no chaste kiss that, but one that stole the rest of her breath and made her thoughts muddled and hazy. She wrapped her arms about his neck, because it was the natural thing to do when one was cradled in another's arms and being soundly kissed to boot.

He broke it and smiled down at her, blue eyes fairly dancing with passion. "I missed you."

She blinked dazedly up at him, trying to organize thoughts that were running about in some back recess of her mind. "I missed you too." Was all that she could manage at the moment and his smile turned sultry.

"Shall we go upstairs and let you chase this miserable cold from my bones? Its fleeing fast just at the thought."

She blushed. She recalled who else was staying on that selfsame level of rooms and yanked at a lock of his hair urgently. "Rushie. Arshes Nei is here."

At which he blinked at her, smile fading. His eyes scanned the courtyard and fixed on the figure of the Thunder Empress. She had not moved from the top of the steps. Her gaze had not wavered. He let Yoko down gently and she thought he cursed under his breath. The half-elf turned then, and disappeared back inside the castle.

"How long?" He looked down to her gauging her temper on the matter. She sighed, wrapping her arms about herself under the cloak. "Almost a week. She came looking for you." She added the last unnecessary bit of information with a tremor in her voice. She bit her lip to cover it.

He put a hand on her shoulder, distracted. "Later -- I promise I'll talk with you later. Let me deal with her."

She didn't say anything. She couldn't. He strode away from her and she stood in his wake, lips still bruised from his kiss. Gara came up at her shoulder, his face pale and tense.

"Arshes." He said. Yoko nodded. He shut his eyes briefly, then shook his head as if something crawled in his ear.

"She should have stayed away." Kall said, stepping to Yoko's other side, frowning.

Gara cast him a look over Yoko's head. "What's left of her men are here. We're here. Where else could she go?"

"She'll bring trouble."

"No. She won't." Gara said, with determination in his tone. "Don't do her an injustice. She's not malicious. She's never been. She only follows his lead."

"And you would defend her regardless."

"Maybe."

He didn't have to ask anyone where the Thunder Empress had gone. He could follow the scent of her unique presence blind and deaf. He had sensed that difference in her over a hundred years ago, when she had stared up at him, abandoned and frightened, a big eyed, half-human child who would have taken any hand offered to help her. And he had offered his, because at the time, it had amused him to do so. She had intrigued him to a certain degree, with her inbred magic that she was so ignorant of possessing. A blank slate on which he could write. Which he could form to a being of his own making. And she had emerged a wonderful, spectacular butterfly from the bruised cocoon of childhood. His doing. He had made her what she was. And he loved his creation. He could not help but love the fruition of his labors. Could not help but love that which worshipped him. Narcissism was ever an integral part of Dark Schneider's personality.

But at this moment, he was uncertain if he wanted her presence. He would never abandon her, but he was treading delicate ground with Yoko and of all the things he had ever wanted, her goodwill ranked absurdly high among them. He was still angry that she had known about the baby and not told him. Or perhaps it was only that she had thrown it in his face as a weapon to use against him.

She had gone to a room on the second floor. The door was half ajar and she stood with her back to it, looking out the window.

"So she forgives you. How convenient for the both of you."

"Arshes." Warningly. "Why did you come here?"

She shuddered, and turned her head to cut a glance at him from the side of her eye. "Why do you think? Should I have just sat there staring at the ocean while you run to soothe that girl's feelings, when you have no care for mine?"

"It might have been more opportune." He muttered. "Damnit, I'm trying to right a wrong here."

"What about the wrong done me?" She whispered.

If she raged at him, he could deal with it better. But her whispered tones of hurt made him guilty. He took a breath and tried to formulate in his own mind how he might explain it to her. There had been a time when he wouldn't have bothered.

"Arshes, this is important to me. Yoko is important to me ---"

"Why? Why is she so different than all the others?"

"Because she is. Because I love her."

"You said you loved me." A stifled sob of heartfelt misery.

"I do. It doesn't change how I feel for you." He was down to pleading now. He heard it in his own voice and felt mild disgust that he had been reduced to plea bargaining with two women in the last month. He might as well start giving donations at temple. He threw out his hands and stalked across the room to her, catching her by the shoulder and forcing her to turn and look fully at him.

"Look, Arshes, deal with it. Think what ever you want -- you will anyway -- but deal with it."

"Do you want me to go?" Tiny voice. Small, hurt voice and large bruised eyes that reminded him of the child he'd found in the forest so long ago. No. He did not want her to go. He did not want her hurt and alone. He just wanted her to give him a little room to placate Yoko, who might be gentler in nature but was damned sure not as likely to overlook a second offense so quick on the footsteps of the first.

"Stay. Just be nice."

Yoko wasn't as easy to find. She was not in her room. He threw off his cloak and gloves on the end of her bed, then went downstairs to look for her there. Housemaids bobbed curtsies at him as he passed and he ignored them, not even giving them the usual lecherous leer that had them giggling behind their hands in embarrassed delight at his passing.

Sta-Veron had been a welcome gray beacon in the endless white, but now the welcome was not so warm. He'd almost rather still be out in the snowy wilderness. Almost. Even the dubious moods of two women could not reduce him to that. Down into the main hall, where the conversation was a buzz of confused chatter. Everyone had crowded in and the kitchen maids were running about with mugs of warmed ale and bowls of stew to warm men too long in the freezing weather. He did not see Kall-Su, but Gara was down by the fire, with his back against the flame and a cup of ale in his hand. Schneider stalked over to him and the master ninja's frown followed him the distance.

"Where's Yoko?" "How is Arshes?" Came out simultaneously. Schneider lifted a brow. Gara looked down into his ale.

"I think she's in the kitchen." Gara muttered.

Hiding, he thought, from confrontation with him. He walked through the kitchen door, into domain he had not stepped before and half a dozen female eyes snapped up to him. Yoko leaned against a counter next to Kall's housekeeper, an apple frozen in her hands.

"Ooooh, hello." The crone of a cook leered at him. She had at least four teeth left in her mouth, which probably attested for the tenderness of her cooking. It would have to be for her to chew.

"Yoko, I want to talk to you."

Her eyes went round and wary. "I'm helping Keitlan peel apples. Maybe later."

"No. Now." He said, patience already a thin stretched line.

"I'd really rather not." She lifted her pert little nose in the air with a edge of stubbornness flashing into her eyes.

"Damnit, I didn't plan this. This is not my fault."

"Who's fault is it?" The housekeeper sniffed without looking up from her rapidly moving paring knife.

"Stay out of this." He snapped.

"Don't talk to my friends like that. And she's right. It is your fault. It's not my fault. It's not Arshes Nei's fault."

"You're mad at me because she came here?"

"I'm not mad at you." She practically screamed at him. The kitchen girls were all madly performing their tasks, but their ears were practically twitching they listened so hard. "If I was mad at you, I wouldn't be talking to you at all. I just want you to go away so I can think for just a little while."

"Think about what? If you'd just let me explain you wouldn't have to think."

"That's the problem, you moron. I don't want you telling me what to think. I can do it on my own." She let out a frustrated little half breath, half cry. He stared at her, hurt and feeling unjustly accused. He had not been prepared to come back and face this. He hated being caught off guard.

The old cook offered him a tart fresh from the oven. He took a step back from her, then whirled and stormed out the door. Through the ninja and men at arms who were exchanging tales of the chase through the mountains and up the stairs. Kall was in his chambers, a servant collecting armor to be cleaned and polished and beaten free of dents. They both looked up at Schneider's unannounced intrusion.

"I do believe I hate women." He hissed in greeting. Kall blinked at him. The servant gathered up an armful of armor and hurried from the room.

"I -- ah -- don't recall I've ever heard that from you before." Kall was trying to be delicate. Kall had his boots off and was down to the undertunic worn under the armor padding. There was not a piece of discarded clothing on the floor. Kall was generally meticulous in his tidiness. He could be damned annoying, when Schneider wanted a little rousing disorder. Kall went to a tall armoire and found a robe. Schneider flopped down on the bed and glared at the ceiling.

"I can't understand them. Are they trying to make my life miserable?"

"I rather doubt it."

"Why would she blame me for Arshes showing up? Why would Arshes follow me out here when she knew I was trying to get Yoko to forgive me?"

"Why were you cruel to Yoko in the first place, if it means so much?"

Schneider turned a dark glare on the younger wizard. "Didn't you and I go over this?"

Kall looked away, exasperated. "Tell Arshes to go away then."

"I can't do that."

"Ah -- well then there's a problem."

"You know what would be perfect?"

Kall slanted a look at him. "If you say a threesome, I shall be very disappointed in you."

Schneider opened his mouth, then shut it before saying. "No. But, that's not a bad idea, by the way. What would be perfect is if the two of them could see things logically."

"There's logic to this situation? Did I miss something?"

"Don't be smart. If they stopped to think about it, they'd see that neither one is a threat to the other. I'm perfectly capable of satisfying them both."

Kall was staring at him with a sort of amazed expression. "You're not seriously thinking about suggesting this to them, are you?"

"What, you don't think they'd buy it?"

"If you do, please do it outside of my city. I'd prefer it undamaged."

"All right. Fine. Be that way. You're no help at all."

The door was not quite latched. Gara knocked at it hesitantly and it inched inwards. There was a sniffle from within, but no answer to his summons. He pushed it open and stood in the doorway, not knowing if he should enter or slip away. Arshes sat in the center of the bed, her knees up to her chest, arms wrapped about those, as miserable as he had ever seen her.

"Go away." She said quietly.

"Are you all right?" He felt a sick tightness in his chest at the pain in her face.

"I'm fine. Please close the door."

"You don't look fine." Stubbornly he refused to retreat.

"I look like a fool." She said, wiping the back of one hand across a moist cheek. "I shouldn't have come here."

She looked away laying her cheek on her knees. Gara stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him, pressing his back to it. He felt like a thief, intruding upon her sadness. He wished he could steal it away.

"Why did you?"

"I didn't know what else to do. I didn't know where else to go. Gara, he hurt me when he was dead and he hurts me when he's alive. And I can't stop loving him." She sobbed, hugging herself tighter. "I'm such a fool. I'm such a fool."

He went over, reached out to lay his hand hesitantly on the top of her dark head. "You're no fool, Arshes. Never a fool."

"How can you say that?"

"Loyalty and devotion do not make a fool, woman."

She looked up at him, amber eyes wide and full of tears. "Tell me what to do, Gara. Tell me what I should do."

He stared at her, and couldn't tell her what a marvelous, incredible creature she was. He could not tell her how she inspired him.

"I can't tell you what to do. Schneider can't tell you. You have to make that decision on your own and none of us make a difference when it comes right down to it. It's your life, Arshes. Not his or mine or anybody's."

"I was so happy to see him. He welcomed me with open arms. But the whole time he was thinking about her. He's never used me before to get to someone else and he did then. I feel so ashamed." She threw herself against him, looking for comfort. Awkwardly he held her, rigid and unprepared for her outpouring of emotion. She never showed this much emotion. And all for the disregard Schneider had shown her. It made his blood boil, to see her so reduced. If anger over Yoko's pain had been a question of honor, then this went beyond that. This was personal. And even if she never realized it, when Arshes hurt, Gara hurt.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath35.htm



	35. Chapter 35

aftermath35

**Thirty-five**

Gara shut the door behind him and stood for a moment with the solid wood at his back. The Murasame pressed against his spine, its hilt rising over his shoulder like a living thing that always watched and waited. Her room was next to his. Gods knew what fate had put its twisted hand to that arrangement. He wanted to take the sword off and the weight of the armor and the clothing he had worn for two weeks or more tromping through the snow.

A door down the hall opened, Kall-Su's chambers, he thought, and Schneider walked out. He stood in the hall a moment, as if undecided, then started for the stairs leading down to the main hall. Gara ground his teeth and pushed off from the door, sliding down the hall with all the grace and silence of a lifetime of training. He caught up with Schneider ten steps down.

"What did you say to her?"

The sorcerer jerked his head about, startled at Gara's silent presence at his back. He paused, his perfect face miming bafflement.

"What business is it of yours?" He said airily and something inside Gara snapped.

He made no noise of protest, merely snarled and whipped an elbow out. It caught Schneider across the jaw. His head snapped back, he faltered a step and Gara slammed him backwards into the stairwell wall.

"Godsdamn you. Its my business that I looked after her while you were in hell. Its my business that she's my friend and I respect her and her feelings, which you goddamned well have no sense of burden for." He leaned close, glaring down, his hands on either side of Schneider's head. A trickle of blood seeped from the side of Schneider's lip. He lifted a hand between them to gingerly touch the split. His eyes were hidden by lashes.

"Back off, Gara." A quiet warning.

"I will not."

"Have you lost your sanity?" Again low voiced. The lashes flickered up. There was still something of perplexity in those blue eyes and irritation that did not quite verge on the anger that Gara felt.

"Damn you, stop hurting her."

"Arshes."

"Yes, Arshes! You use her then you discard her, then you use her again when it suits your purposes."

"You don't know what you're talking about, Gara." A little bit of anger seeped into the tone. Good, Gara wanted anger. He wanted something he could sink his teeth into. Schneider tried to shove one of the big man's arms out of his way and Gara, taller and heavier used his weight to slam against him, pressing him back against the wall with a thud.

"Goddamnit, Gara -- do you want a fight? Is that what you want? You're about to get one."

"You are not the god of the world, Schneider. You can't treat people like that and get away with it. You used her to hurt Yoko and then when you changed your mind, she got hurt. Don't you ever think of anyone else besides yourself?"

"Shut up. Get your fucking hands away from me or loose them."

"Make me."

"Damnit ---Gara." Schneider hissed between this teeth, glancing away in frustration. Gara realized in the part of his brain that was not on a rampage to defend Arshes Nei's honor, that Schneider did not want to fight him. That Schneider was going to great lengths not to return the violence that Gara was teetering on the edge of. It was sobering that Gara was the irrational one here and not the other way around. He prided himself on his calm and here he was squandering it. He was the one asking for a fight -- a fight that he could never hope to win. He cursed and stepped back. Didn't say a word, just called on every shadow skill he had and melted down the stairs like a wraith. Schneider probably saw through it, Gara didn't care. He just wanted away, out of the castle and into the cold where the heat that pulsed inside him might cool.

Gara was down the steps, not making a sound and doing a damn good job of blending into the shadows. He'd had such a stricken look on his face, when the anger had passed, that Schneider just stood with his back against the wall staring at the curve in the stair where he'd disappeared. He ran his tongue along the split inside his lip and healed it with an absent thought.

This had started out such a nice day, what with the destination of Kall's city finally reached after too long in the snowy wilderness. It had been just lovely up until the point he had broken the kiss with Yoko and heard the news of Arshes's presence. From there it had gotten rather dismal. He didn't like feeling guilty and Arshes's damned lost little girl eyes had managed to make him feel it. And Yoko, who had been sweet and shy for the last several weeks - albeit chastely sweet and shy -- had turned back into a fearless, condemning termagant over a period of mere minutes. And to top it all off, Gara looses his mind and assaults him. Miserable, miserable day.

"What are you doing? Are you all right?"

Thinking of termagants -- here she came up the stairs, eyeing him with wary suspicion in her brown eyes. He slid down the wall to sit on a step and her frown deepened.

"Gara just up and attacked me. Can you believe it?"

"Gara wouldn't do that." She said with the vaguely scoffing tones of an adult who had just heard an outrageous tale from an overly imaginative youngster.

He narrowed his eyes balefully at her and did not dignify her rebuttal with an argument. "I am so not in the mood to be bitched at right now."

"Who said I was going to bitch at you?" He little nose lifted into the air.

"Well it would be just par for the course."

"Well, I don't bitch." She said. He laughed, at which she narrowed her eyes and stomped up a step to glare down at him.

"Not that you don't deserve it for plenty of things. Oodles of things. Tons of things. So many things I can't even think of them all."

"I get the picture." He groused.

"No you don't. I sometimes wonder if you even realize that some of the things you do are just -- wrong? Do you? Do you have the moral capacity separate good from bad."

"Yoko, just go away now. You're the one who wanted time alone to think. Take it."

"Oh, right, avoid the really serious issues."

"I'm not a fucking simpleton. Yes, I feel bad about you not being able to handle Arshes and Arshes not being able to handle you. Okay? Satisfied?"

She jabbed a finger under his nose, apparently not satisfied. "You feel bad about that because it directly effects you. Where's the responsibility of doing something about it?"

"What the hell do you want me to do?" he came to his feet and she stepped down at the sudden readjustment of eye levels. "Damnit, you are driving me crazy. I never used to have this many problems. I never used to give a goddamned what anybody thought. What the hell changed?"

She stared up at him, wide eyed at the fervor in his face. She put one hand reflexively to her stomach, reassuring herself of the life she carried within it. "Maybe you did." She whispered. "But you just don't know it."

She looked down and tried to slip up the stairs past him. He put an arm out to stop her.

"And maybe I haven't."

She stood there, blocked by his arm. Then she lifted her eyes to his and met him glare for glare. There was quiet determination in her eyes fed from deep resources of will. "Let me pass. This conversation is over. Later when you've regathered your composure I will speak with you again."

He took a breath, full of indignation over her tone and her implications that he was the one who was irrational. That he was the one out of line. He opened his mouth, ready to spew forth the first biting thing that came to mind and she cut him off.

"I might have idolized you before, when I was naive and young, but I never loved you as much as I loved the Rushie I grew up with. And that was such a small part of you --the rest was decadent and dark and completely lacking in regard. You have changed, because otherwise I couldn't love you now and know deep down that's its not just the Rushie part -- that it's all of you."

She ducked under his arm and was up the stairs, a slight figure that didn't blend as well as Gara, but was gone just a quickly nonetheless. He stared after her, feeling as if the breath had been knocked out of him.

There was a fine celebratory dinner in the great hall. The cook outdid herself. Kall-Su's commanders and their ladies, Gara's ninja lieutenants, Arshes Nei's knight captain all seemed in great, fine moods. The wine flowed, the minstrel's played. Conversation buzzed about the hall like spring pollen. Of the principle players in attendance, Schneider, Gara, Arshes Nei who looked to have come down under duress only, Yoko and Kall-Su himself, only the Ice Lord was not glaring at the world as if it had done him a grave injustice.

Yoko adjusted the placement of food on her plate despondently, never actually looking up to meet anyone eyes and hardly speaking a word and then not above a whisper. Gara sat as far down the main table as he could get from the rest of them and was equally uncommunicative, an unusual trait for the ninja master. Arshes sat among her men, stone faced and stiff backed, glaring at anyone who dared make a comment to her. And Schneider sat slouched in a chair next to Kall, drinking a great deal of wine, fingers drumming the table top with an agitated, discordant beat. The conversations went on around them. Kall felt vaguely displaced, being on the outside of some dark drama that the rest of them shared. The only player in a game of hearts that was not critically engaged in the battle.

He was not usually one for gossip, but something had definitively changed since Schneider had come complaining at his door that afternoon. Words had been exchanged between unknown - but guessed at -- parties. Gara had gotten into the fray, that was clear from the big man's morose expression. He leaned over to Schneider, swirling the wine in his goblet idly.

"Should I hazard a guess and say that things have deteriorated since we last spoke?"

Schneider slanted an ominous glance his way. His eyes were shadowed pools of darkness beneath the heavy fringe of moonlight pale hair. He didn't answer. One of the serving girls slipped between them to refill both their goblets. Schneider leered up at her -- his old familiar leer -- and ran a hand down her posterior as she bent. The girl gasped, turning red, but not with outrage, more with embarrassed pleasure. The female staff -- the ones that were not sympathetically and firmly planted in Yoko's camp, were aflutter over him. He had, as far as Kall knew, been miraculously abstemious in his treatment of them.

The serving girl giggled a little under her breath and leaned over in her filling of Schneider's cup to press her bosom against his arm. A cup slammed onto the table top and wine sloshed over Arshes Nei's untouched dinner plate. Her gaze was fixed on the fire. Yoko's chair scraped up and she made a whispered apology, claiming nausea, and practically ran from the hall.

There was a moment's lull in conversation. People did not quite know where to look. Schneider retrieved his hand from the maid and crossed his arms, glaring at Yoko's empty chair. The girl, sensing the change in mood, hurried back to the kitchen.

"To hell with this." He finally hissed and pushed back from the table so hard his chair toppled backwards when he stood. That most certainly stopped conversation and every eye in the hall followed him as he stalked from it.

Kall sat for a moment, caught in that silence. Then carefully he put his goblet down and rose in a much more mannerly fashion and followed in Schneider's footsteps. Up the stairs. Past the second level where the living quarters were, past the third where his study and library rested, the fourth housed the staff and then there were the steps to the tower. The door was left open and a cold draft whistled down.

Schneider stood on the battlements, looking down over the heights, out over the snowy landscape beyond. The sky was dark and smeared with clouds. Some small bit of powdery snow drifted down from the heavens.

"You'll have to fix this, sooner or later." Kall circled the battlements, running a hand along the rough grain of stone. Hair fluttered about his ears. Snow caught in his lashes. He blinked it out.

"Go the hell away, Kall. No lectures on morality. I've had mine today already."

"Oh. I wasn't aware you took that sort of thing to heart." That was a blatant invitation for strife, but he plunged on anyway. "But, strangely enough, I can see that you have. What will you do?"

Schneider glanced over his shoulder, hair whipping about him like a thing alive. "I had an idea, but you didn't seem to like it."

"I do not believe it was -- well thought out." Kall said diplomatically. "I had almost thought -- from the looks on all of your faces that you had suggested it to them."

Schneider laughed, turned his back on the battlements and held the hair back off his face with one hand. "No. Never got the chance. Gara seems to have a strong opinion on the matter as well."

"Gara -- is protective over those he considers friends."

"I guess I don't qualify."

"You seldom need protection."

Again, a slightly mad laugh. "I wonder how high you'd have to go before the air turned so thin you couldn't breath?"

"I have no idea."

"I've a notion to find out." He shot skywards, cutting through snow and wind like a black sheathed scythe. Kall stared up in dismay at the rapidly diminishing figure. The clouds blotted Schneider's form. The sky rumbled with unease, energies here there for not present swirling high over Sta-Veron. Lightning pierced the dark clouds like the finger of god. He felt the uncontrolled release of mystic energies and cursed. Not over his city. If Schneider were going to throw a fit, let him do it elsewhere.

His feet left the rooftop and he cut through the night sky, heading into the boiling storm. Winds tore at him, but they were nothing to a wizard who had mastered the elements of ice and winter malice. He broke through the clouds, going for the center of power that was still damned high above him. Was Schneider really trying to breach the shell of oxygen that surrounded the world? A bolt of errant lightning struck at him, attracted to his solid presence in the midst of clouds and frozen water. He shielded against it, effortlessly. Tried to find the center of the storm Schneider had provoked and make it null, but it was a wild thing of thunder and lightning and those elements were not so easily controllable for him.

Another bolt struck at him hungrily, its fingers of energy skittering across his shield. The resulting boom of thunder almost deafened him. He put his hands over his ears and called out Schneider's name.

"Stop it, Damnit."

Something slammed his shield with enough insidious force to shatter it and solid force hit him from behind. Arms wrapped around him, pinning his arms, holding him fast against a body that radiated heat against his cold. Fire wizard against Ice. Schneider pressed close and whispered in his ear.

"She said I'd changed. What does that mean? To change would mean something -- some outside force molded me and I won't be manipulated or molded to anyone else's will. Not even hers."

"Stop the storm. You don't know how volatile the weather patterns are here. You'll do the city harm."

"Make me, Kall."

Kall threw his head back in frustration, hitting Schneider on the side of the cheek. "It's not a game. You don't have to prove anything to me. Its yourself that's uncertain. You don't have to go to lengths just to prove you're the same or not. What does it matter?"

"You always try to reason with me, Kall. Why do you bother?"

A finger of lightning formed out of thin air behind them. It struck Schneider in the back and laced through him and into Kall. His vision went white. Every nerve ending in his body screamed in agony. His heart froze up in shock.

And started back up erratically, spurred by Schneider who recovered faster from the strike than he did, if he'd been effected by it at all. He was laughing. "Why do you bother at all, Kall?"

Kall felt vaguely sick from the strike; he forced it away. He'd lost hold of the flight spell and let Schneider support the both of them while he got his wits together. "Because you bothered with me, that's why. Nobody else would."

There it was. The truth of the matter. The debt he could never repay. His life, his self-esteem, everything he was and would never have been if Schneider had not, in his own indubitable way, convinced him he was not the abhorrent, worthless creature every other person in his life had managed to convince him he was.

Silence after that. The clouds boiled around them. Lighting flared. Was diverted away by will alone. Schneider rested his forehead on Kall's shoulder.

"All right." He murmured and the storm seemed to collapse in upon itself. Even the clouds seemed to dissipate. Their feet touched down on the tower roof and he let Kall go, looking tired and world weary, he turned his back. Kall stared, shaken to the core himself.

"Go on, Kall. I'm not going to do anything destructive. Go back to dinner or your books or whatever."

Kall couldn't find any words to reply. There was nothing to do but comply and hope for the best.

The master taught Lily the words to certain hymns that he found pleasurable. She had never sang religious songs before, her former owners having bawdier tastes. But she knew the words of the common songs sang at temple or for religious events. These hymns were different. Unfamiliar to her. He said they were of the ancient world. He said it was all right if she knew those old lyrics for she would never sing them to any other living soul but him. She would serve no other master but him for the rest of her life. In this forbidding, windowless place, where hope died, squashed under the iron shod heel of His religion, she thought he might be right.

She sat on the floor at his feet and strummed her instrument, singing the words he had taught her. Sometimes he did nothing but stare into space, and she was not certain he even heard her. At others he mouthed the words with her, stroking her hair while she played, his eyes lit with the fervor of a passion she did not understand. He never touched her in any other way. Not to beat her - she was far to accommodating for that -- or relieve his physical needs. If he slacked those needs at all, she never saw. The only times he ever seemed excited in that manner -- really excited was when he was punishing some violation of his code - whether real or imagined. Taking out his wraith on some hapless, broken hostage of this monastery they all inhabited. She never watched long enough to see what he did after he'd slacked his thirst for blood and pain. She didn't want to know if he did more. She thought he might have -- when the madness was upon him. She thought sometimes, when he purified himself with prayer and self-inflicted pain, that it was to cleanse himself of the sin of giving in to those baser desires.

Sometimes while she played, he would orate to himself. Talking about the will of the God and his place as the chosen servant. Of his divine right as the Prophet. He spoke of darker things too. Of hatreds and revenge that made her shiver and sometimes miss a chord.

She sat against the wall of his own private room, while he knelt before the stone symbol of divinity where he delivered his prayers to the god. Candles burned on either side of the icon, casting the room in a flickering shadow. She played a particular hymn. One of divine retribution and the reward of the faithful. Her voice was low pitched and the strumming of the lyre was almost a whisper, a mere background noise to the Master's communion with his god. She only half listened to his words, she had learned to tune out what did not directly apply to herself. But some of the things he said caught her attention. He spoke of the future and his own departure. Of that, she had great interest.

"It is almost time." He said. "The day fast approaches when my retribution shall be at hand and I shall leave to do Your work. He was stronger than I ever imagined. I miscalculated the strength of will that a minion of hell could possess. I failed You in that. I could not break the spirit to take the vessel. Not physically. Perhaps there are other ways. I know his weaknesses. I know what he treasures, as if such a creature could hold anything sacred. Take those things away and we shall see --- and if that path fails, then there is always the other. Your will shall be served."

He bowed his head and chanted prayers and Lily shivered. Someone was going to be hurt. Someone was going to suffer the divine retribution of her master and she wished that fate on no living thing. But she missed not a word or a note in her song. He would have noticed that and in the mood he entertained now, she would have sorely regretted it.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath36.htm



	36. Chapter 36

aftermath36

**Thirty-six**

Schneider wasn't talking to her. Yoko was supposed fair was fair. She had not given him much of a chance to express himself after he'd come back. She'd done fine with Arshes being in Sta-Veron up until the moment that he'd come back, then all of a sudden the hurt and the uncertainty became a little more than she could easily deal with and she'd forced him away. Natural reflex, to distance one's self from the things that were most likely to cause great pain. Of course then he'd gone all spooky on her, dark and dangerous and very much looking to rebel against all the invisible things he thought were changing him. Changing him.

What a completely and monumentally foolish man. Everything a person experienced changed them. Every moment of life changed a body, an outlook, a soul. He treated the notion like an anathema. Like it had never occurred to him that it might happen to him. He was scared, she thought. He was scared of growing a conscience. And he was being distant and obnoxious because of it. It did not particularly bother her. She had other things on her mind. She thought a lot about the baby. More and more now that it was obviously apparent that she was pregnant. It was amazing how differently people treated pregnant women. Men became such bumbling, considerate creatures and here she was months away from birthing.

Even Schneider, who tried not to make it obvious kept a close tab on her. He watched her when she wasn't looking and she knew he was generally about when she went into the city with Keitlan or Gara or some of the wives of Kall-Su's commanders. He was scared of the baby too, she thought. She could see it in his eyes when they lingered on her middle. She'd spent a great deal of time pondering why and could only come up with his fear of responsibility and the undeniable truth that a child of his would be a obligation he could not shake. Even if he wanted to. He never had been able to give up anything that he considered his.

She wasn't mad at him. Even for the present sulk. He'd done worse things and this one was more defense than anything else, even if he didn't realize it. He would get over it. She was actually, to some degree rather pleased at the brooding. It more than anything else indicated he was having a battle of conscience. He was being really rather good, if one considered how his tantrums usually played out. Other than the occasional bout of minor destruction, mostly non-magical, he was curbing his tendencies for violence. And he was not sleeping with the staff, at least according to Keitlan. And as far as she knew - and she figured it was a sure bet since Arshes was still giving everybody the silent treatment and casting mournful looks at Schneider -- he wasn't sleeping with her either. Which meant he was either going into town and entertaining himself with the women there, or he was abstaining. She rather thought it was the latter. Rumors tended to travel in relatively small cities like Sta-Veron.

It had been a quiet couple of weeks. Yoko was starting to sew baby clothing. Keitlan was enthusiastically helping her. A rider came in from the north, claiming that a creature had come down from the heights and was wrecking havoc in the villages. Apparently other such anomalies had plagued the mountains for Kall-Su's men eagerly spoke of the last one they had hunted down and killed. There was a great cry for a hunt. Gara was all for it. And to everyone's surprise Arshes Nei quietly announced that she too would join the hunting party. Which was all fine and good until Schneider lazily included himself, which was obviously his attempt to piss off Gara, who had been at cold silences with him for weeks now. Kall-Su looked frustrated and distressed over the glares and bickering that resulted.

"Why don't the three of you go and I'll stay here where it's peaceful and quiet?" he finally suggested with icy regard for the lot of them. Yoko applauded him for the splash of maturity in an otherwise puerile situation. And they, to avoid looking the fools in the face of the gathered men and servants had no choice but to lift their chins and stoically agree to join together in camaraderie during this one hunt.

"Why don't you just do that." Schneider gave him an arch look and Kall-Su waved a hand to indicate that it really mattered neither one way or the other to him. He would just as well enjoy the solitude of being left alone in his library, Yoko well knew.

So they set out in the company of Kiro and his best trackers to hunt down a hideous monster down from the cold heights. Kall-Su retreated to his books and Yoko went back to contemplating the future life of her baby.

It was barely that evening when a messenger came to the gates with a note for her. The maid that brought it to her looked as bemused by the sealed letter as Yoko herself was. Everyone she knew in Sta-Veron, save a few casual acquaintances in town, lived within the walls of the castle. She turned the parchment over in her hands curiously. It was sealed with wax and bound with a blue ribbon. She broke both seals and unfolded the paper. The note was short and written in a neat script.

_Tia Note Yoko_

_I have come a great distance to find you. It is urgent that I speak with you. It concerns your honorable father, the great priest Geo Note. I am staying at the Red Wolf Inn. Please come this afternoon and please use discretion. There are those who do not hold your esteemed father in good will._

_Your friend_

_Maya_

Maya? Maya was a holy sword. She had trained with Maya when she had thought to enter that fellowship. Maya was devoted to Geo Note and the Goddess. She had even on occasion protected Yoko's own life. And she was here. How had she managed the cruel journey through the winter bound north? Oh, Schneider's new pass opened the way. One could hardly forget, considering how much Kiro and his men groused about the vulnerability in which the magic made pass placed the Ice Lord's provinces.

A dozen dread scenarios passed her mind over what might have brought the holy sword here regarding her father. Had something happened to the great priest? Oh, please let it not be so. Please let him be all right. She dearly wanted him to see his grandchild. She put her sewing down, hands shaking, and went up stairs to fetch her cloak. With Gara and Schneider out on the hunt it would be easy to sneak into the city with no one insisting on escorting her and none the wiser. She put her hood up and hustled through the courtyard and all the daily activity that went on about the castle. The guards let her through the gate with nothing more than a nod of greeting and a wish for her to have a good afternoon. She returned the courtesy and asked where the Red Wolf Inn was located.

A nice inn, not far from the gates of the city. It was a long, cold walk, but the exercise felt good. Her cheeks and nose were red by the time she stepped into the front door of the inn. A fire crackled in the main hearth. A collection of tables sat about the room and the smells of baking bread drifted through the air. There was a couple at one table, taking lunch and a lone, cloaked figure sitting by the window. A woman looked up at her. Close cropped hair and a nose disfigured by one too many fights, but not unpretty. Yoko remembered her before the nose had been broken and the hair shorn.

"Maya." They clasped hands and hugged. Maya gestured Yoko to sit and she did.

"Are you here by yourself?" Yoko began to assault the holy sword with questions. "Is father all right? How did you manage to come all this way in the winter? Did the army go back home?"

"Yoko." The young woman placed her hands over Yoko's, smiling gently. "I'm just glad to find you alive and unharmed."

"Why would I be harmed? These are my friends."

"I know, but they are not the friends of your father."

"Father. Is he okay?"

"No. He came to find you. But the journey was harsh. He's injured and we feared to bring him here. It is well known that Dark Schneider holds a grudge against him and after --- all that happened we thought it doubly risky."

"Oh, goddess, Maya. Where is he?"

"In the mountains to the south. We're in hiding from the Ice Lord's men. They guard the pass. He wants to see you."

"Maya, you've got to bring him here. It will be all right. I'll get Lord Kall-Su to send out a party ---"

"No. You don't see it. You're too close to them. Do you remember what your sorcerous friends are capable of? Do you doubt that Dark Schneider would hesitate to destroy an enemy of his?"

Yoko stared, aghast. At this moment in time, when he was so angry and chaotic in his moods, she was not quite certain she could deny such a thing.

"But, I can't just ride out without telling anyone. Not that far. They'll be worried." Goddess, Maya couldn't imagine how worried, considering Yoko's present state.

"Leave a note with the innkeeper here. Have it delivered tonight after we've gotten half a days ride and relieve any fears. He came all this way to see you, Yoko. Don't make it in vain."

"What does he want? Does he want to bring me back? Larz said I was banished from Meta-Rikan. Did he change his mind?"

Sadly, Maya shook her head. "No. It's why he came all this way. I don't think he can live not knowing you're all right. He places the blame upon himself."

"He doesn't! That's ridiculous. It was my decision and nobody else's."

"Yoko, please, we don't have much time. Just talk to him."

What could she do, really. Turn away from her father. Again. After she had left him without a word of good bye. She had condemned herself for that for a long while now. He lay injured in the mountains waiting for her.

"I don't have the gear to make such a trip." She said quietly. Maya smiled, relieved.

"I do. Come with me to my room and we'll get you travel clothing."

Through the gates they rode, two bundled, faceless riders. The gate guards had no reason not to let them pass. Their horses plowed through soft snow and Yoko thought over and over how angry they all were going to be at her for running off like this. She could imagine Keitlan's disparaging words. Kall-Su's icy stare and goddess -- goddess, Rushie's rage that would have nothing to do with ice or cold. Well, they'd have to live with it. Father was more important than a short while of worry on their part. She would talk him into coming back to Sta-Veron. It would be stupid for him not to. She would talk reason into everyone. Whether they wanted to hear it or not.

They rode deep into the night, until Yoko finally begged exhaustion and they made camp. A miserable little pit dug out of the snow where they bundled together in sleeping bags to conserve heat. They continued on early the next morning and Yoko murmured the words to a healing spell to take away her exhaustion, to make certain the baby was all right inside her with all the cold and the exertion.

No riders came after them. But, as Maya said, they had a good head start. She hoped Kall-Su had received her message. The innkeeper's boy had promised to deliver it at the falling of dusk. That afternoon the white caps of the southern mountains came into view. Yoko had never seen them from this side of the range before. The last time, she had been so self-absorbed in misery that she had hardly noticed how beautiful they were. The stark snowy plains turned into woodland and the gradual sloping of hills.

"How much further?" she asked, when the mountains loomed so close they seemed to fill the sky.

"A day perhaps." Maya said. "Not too deep into the mountains."

That was a relief. Yoko did not relish having to ride those steep trails. They had been treacherous enough during the fall.

Mistress Keitlan had come timidly knocking at the library door the night after the hunt left looking for monsters in the mountains. Kall-Su assumed it was a request that he take some dinner, whether here or in the hall. She probably had it with her. He absently called permission to enter and the woman stepped into the room, hands unencumbered, and clutching at each other nervously. Mistress Keitlan did not normally show great nervousness in his presence, unlike most of her staff. He quirked a brow at her in question.

"My lord. It's the lady Yoko. She's -- she's disappeared from the castle."

"What do you mean-- disappeared?"

"She's nowhere to be found, my lord. I had my girls search high and low when she didn't take lunch. I thought, perhaps she might have gone into town, but she'd not stay this long. It's getting past dark."

He stared at her, the book and all he'd been reading banished from his mind. All he could feel was that numb sensation of shock that came with unexpected grave news. "Did the guards see her leave the castle?"

"Yes, lord. Early this afternoon. She asked after the Red Wolf Inn."

"Have you sent anyone there looking for her?"

"No, my lord. I came to you first."

He shut the book and rose, not bothering to put it in its place. "She said nothing to you at all about an errand or something she wanted from town?"

"Not a word. But-- but one of the girls brought her a note this morning."

"A note? From whom?"

"I don't know. She didn't say. I think that's why she went into town. At least I can't think of any other reason."

He took a breath to prevent himself from cursing the woman for not thinking it odd for Yoko to be receiving notes in the first place and doubly so for not mentioning it right away. "Call down to the stable and have my horse readied."

She bobbed her head and hurried to do his bidding. He disregarded the offer of escort, wanting to settle this-- hoping desperately to settle this quietly and on his own before alerting the whole town that one of his guests had gone missing. He rode through the streets with none of the nighttime travelers aware that their lord moved among them. He knew the inn. It was by the main gates of the city. He left the chestnut in the street outside and stalked into the front door.

A dozen mildly curious faces looked up from dinners and drinks to access him, the intruder in their midst. A murmur went up. He was not inconspicuous. Quiet descended rather suddenly after that.

"Who owns this inn?" he asked into the silence. The man behind the bar blanched and hesitantly lifted a hand.

"I do, yer lordship."

Kall walked towards him, weeding through tables to get there. People got up hastily, making a path for him. "Is there a place we can talk?"

The man gestured to a door behind the bar. The entrance to the kitchen and the rooms the innkeepers family shared. The wife froze in the slicing of a chunk of meat. A boy stared wide eyed from a suds filled basin, a dirty dish in hand.

"My lord, is there something I can get you? What service do you wish?"

"Did a young woman come here this afternoon. Very pretty, long reddish hair. Brown eyes. So tall." He held his hand up at about chin level. "She might have received a message to meet someone here."

The boy dropped his dish, dark eyes widening in something very like terror.

"I remember a girl like that. Yes, I do, my lord. Came this afternoon." The innkeeper nodded eagerly, glad to help. Overjoyed to help. "She did meet someone. Another woman. Checked in just yesterday and left today. Paid in southern gold and a lot of it, so I gave her a room. Had two horses in the stables. Your girl, she might have left with her, now that I recall."

Left with the woman? Left with some strange woman who summoned her with a mysterious note? Was Yoko insane? He took a moment to compose a calm question.

"Did they say where they were going?"

The inn keeper shook his head. The wife hadn't moved an inch, the knife still held gripped in her fingers, her face shocked at the presence of the Ice Lord himself in her kitchen. The boy's face was a picture of fear. Of guilt. Kall fixed his eyes upon the teenager.

"Did you see them leave or hear what they might have said?"

"N--no. No, not I." It came out a strangled gasp. The boy wiped soapy hands on his tunic, eyes flickering nervously towards the back door.

"For some reason," Kall said softly. "I don't believe you."

The boy's face turned ashen. He bolted suddenly for the door, practically slammed it off its hinges as he rushed through it. Kall ground his teeth and brushed past the startled innkeeper after the boy. There was a narrow alley outside and the boy ran pell nell down it. Kall made a sign in the air, and of the darkness that swallowed the ground a beast rose up, made of ice and water and arcane power. It roared, a brittle, shrieking roar and bounded down the alley, overtaking the boy in three leaps, and slamming him to the ground. It crouched over him, it's cold maw at his neck, when Kall came up. He crouched where the boy could see him.

"So, what are you afraid to tell me?"

"Nothing. I swear it. I didn't do nothing."

Kall sighed, beleaguered. "Do you really want to lie to me? Think about it."

The boy thought. His eyes leaked tears and his finger clutched at the hard earth. "I didn't know. I swear I didn't know she had nothing to do with you." He finally cried out. "All I did was throw the note into the fire. The other girl, she gave me a silver piece not to take it to the castle."

"This note. What did it say?"

"I don't know. I can't read, yer lordship."

He believed him. He rubbed a hand over his eyes, chasing away the beginnings of a throbbing head ache. Schneider was going to kill him. Was absolutely and completely going to kill him.

"What fire?" he waved a finger and the ice beast dissipated into a shower of fine snow that heaped upon the boys sprawled body. The boy gaped at him.

"The main one. The main hearth. But it's long gone to cinders now."

"Have you cleaned the ash since you burned it?"

"No." The boy's brows drew in befuddlement.

Kall was not of a mind to explain it. He rose and went back into the inn. Past the innkeeper and his crying wife and into the main room, where the patrons had formed into groups of curious spectators. He ignored them. Went to the fire and stood before it. Reconstruction was tedious work and mix that with the active flame, which was never his specialty, and it promised to bring back the headache. He recollected the words of the spell, got them straight in his mind before speaking them outloud. Felt the fire rebel against his influences, thought about just smothering it, but that might scatter the ashes and this would be so much easier if they were all in one place.

Something flickered besides flame in the hearth. Ash and cinder coalesced, fluttering up out of the pile at the bottom of the pit.

He focused on what he wanted, on the hand of the person who had written it, on the thing that had her aura about it that had been consumed by the fire.

A piece of black edged, charred paper floated out of the fire and settled on the hearthstones. Kall picked it up and read Yoko's graceful, sweeping script.

_Kall-Su_

_Please forgive me for not telling you, but my father has traveled into the mountains and waits to see me. A Holy Sword has come to take me to him. He is injured and I hope to convince him to return to Sta-Veron with me. _

_If Schneider gets back before I do, please, please don't let him get angry and come after me. I want to convince father there is no harm for him here._

_Love_

_Yoko_

He read it again and once more, looking for something to explain her duplicity. Her father's uncertainty of his well being in Sta-Veron was ridiculous. That he would ask her to travel days through winter storm and snow to reach him was inconceivable. Geo Note was not that stupid. That she would consent to it, pregnant and alone, was pure insanity. How could she be so gullible?

He folded the note carefully and placed it in his belt. The silence in the room behind him was tomb-like. All their eyes held some measure of fear at his presence. And these were his people, who averted their gazes from his when he chanced to pass them by. An old man made a little averted sign against evil. Kall-Su stopped looking then. Just focused his eyes elsewhere until he was out of the inn and back to the unbiased company of his horse.

He had to let Schneider know. There was no help for it. She was out there in the company of someone who had paid to divert her note from him. No proper company that. Headed towards something that very well might not be her father. They had too many enemies to take chances. He had no choice. If Schneider would be angry at him letting it happen to begin with, he would be doubly so if he were not alerted post-haste.

Trees closed around them like leering giants, their limbs heavy with snow. It fell sometimes in clumps, hitting the ground with muffled impact that was eerie and echoless in the insulated forest slope. Yoko pulled her cloak tighter, huddling under its insubstantial warmth. Maya rode before her, looking for a path in the camouflaging snow. A trail that would lead to Geo Note. There was a fork in the trail up ahead. One way leading west down the sloping side of the mountain and the other winding higher up. Maya looked back and grinned, pointing to the higher path.

"This is it. " She called. Yoko sighed, relief filling her like warmth. She urged her horse up the trail and it obliged with a put upon equine sigh. Up the trail and past an outcropping of granite and she picked up the scent of smoke in the air. There was a camp site beyond the bend in the trail, with horses picketed in the lee of a group of trees and a fire pit dug in the snow. Men sat around it, cloaked and bundled against the cold. She could not see the cut of their armor under the winter gear. She looked for the familiar form of her father. For the outer robes of a priest and saw them huddled next to the fire for warmth.

Yoko let out a little cry of joy and spurred her horse past Maya, and towards the camp site.

"Father." She cried. "Father, its me."

She pulled the animal to a stop, untangling her cloak to dismount. He straightened his shoulders and rose, turning to face her. His eyes gleamed up at her, sparkling with the fervor of victory. Not the face of her father at all. But the narrow, long features that belonged to the Prophet.

"My sweet little Yoko. How nice of you to join me." He smiled up at her and she recoiled, so profoundly shocked that she could not even summon the breath to scream. The men around him rose, and beneath the cloaks she saw the signal of his holy guard, she saw the green eyed face of his captain Sinakha.

All she had the strength to whisper was a terrified prayer to the goddess before he reached out for her.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath37.htm



	37. Chapter 37

aftermath37

**Thirty-seven**

They dragged her down from the saddle into their midst, laying hands to her shoulders and around her neck when she struggled. Angelo in his crisp white robes, fur trimmed and elegant, put his fingers on her chin and forced her to look at him. She spat in his face and his smile faltered. Slowly he wiped it off, with the back of one sleeve.

"Foolish, foolish girl to have sided against me. You could have had so much and now you will have nothing."

The holy sword, Maya, hesitantly approached the ring of men around Yoko and Angelo. Yoko saw her and cried out.

"How could you have led me here? We were friends."

The woman's face fell, but she shored it up. "It is for your own good. They've twisted your thinking. They've made you forsake all that you held dear. We'll save you. The Prophet has promised to bring you back into the fold."

"He's not going to save me." Yoko sobbed. "He's going to destroy me. Can't you see that?"

Maya shook her head. Angelo smiled, looking over his shoulder at the holy sword. "You do your faith justice, Maya. But, she's quite right, you know. There's no salvation for her now that she's been tainted."

The woman opened her mouth, not certain how to take that. Angelo didn't say a word, but force ripped out him and into Maya. Fingers of black power that tore through her body like hail through the thinnest sheet of tissue. The snow was darkened with blood and barely recognizable pieces of what had been a human body. She'd hardly had the time to scream it happened so fast.

Yoko did. Yoko screamed until Angelo back handed her into silence and then she hung in the grip of those who held her with her vision spinning and fear eating at her like a cancer. He put his hands in her hair and lifted her head. Blood trickled down from the corner of her lip. She stared back at him dazedly. His eyes bore into her, his hand slid down her throat to lay splay fingered across her chest.

"Oh and he has tainted you, hasn't he?" The Prophet whispered. "What is this that grows in your womb? A spawn of his? Oh, how very perfect. How very convenient."

"No." She whimpered, the fear exploding into palatable panic; sudden realization of the other life that was threatened here. "Oh, goddess, please no."

"Yes." He said.

Power blossomed in her that she hardly knew she had. Energy and magic that she had no name for save desperation. Explosive force propelled outwards, blasting the men around her backwards, clearing a space around her, save Angelo who merely lifted a hand to shield his eyes and stood firm against her summoning. He simply stared at her, while his men were trying to shake the shock off and climb to their feet. She ran. Darted past the dazed men in the snow and into the fringe of forest behind the campsite. Through low branched furs that tore at her when she passed, into the muffled recesses of a forest asleep in deepest winter.

She pelted up the slope, grabbing at limbs and trees to help her when the passage grew too steep. Her feet slipped in the snow and in the rocks and roots that were hidden under it. She fell so many times she lost count. She heard them after her. The sound of heavy bodies crashing through the forest in her wake. The breath came so hard in her chest that it hurt. Tears streamed down her face, filling her mouth when she gasped after air.

She ran blindly in her panic, no thought in her head but saving herself and the child she carried. A small part of her mind tried to reason the best course of action. What would Rushie do? Destroy them all effortlessly. No good help for her there. Gara? Blend into the forest and hide before he struck. She tried to recall the incantation she had used so long ago to sneak past the temple guards and get into Rushie's cell, but her mind was too fractured, her attention too divided between the sounds of the men behind her and dwelling on what Angelo might do to her if he caught her. Why hadn't she gone to Kall-Su before setting out so blindly faithful? He would have reasoned with her, or at the very least not let her go alone.

She topped the rise and on the other side was a steep and treacherous slope, so rocky that only a few persistent trees sprouted up from its surface. There was no choice but to attempt it. She ran along the ridge until she found a place that offered somewhat stable footing and slid down, falling to her backside and sliding a few feet until she caught hold of a scraggly tree to stop her descent. She looked back and saw the dark forms of her pursuers on the ridge. She let go and scooted further down. There was a gully at the bottom, far below, that seemed to run between the slopes of two rises into another section of wood.

"There's no escaping me, Yoko." Angelo's voice echoed above her. He stood on the ridge, robes fluttering in the wind, while his men climbed down after her. Panicked, she scrambled further down the slope. Her boot slipped on snow covered rock and destroyed her balance. Her feet went out from under her and she hit the ground, shoulder and hip and lost all control of her descent. Like a broken doll she tumbled down the rocky slope, a nightmare voyage of pain and fear laced adrenaline. She couldn't breath, she couldn't think, couldn't even grab for handhold her momentum built so fast. She crashed against a rock and rebounded off it and ended up at the bottom in a pain that she could not associate with any state of being she had ever experienced. Her arm was twisted under her unnaturally, her hip throbbing and pounding with bone deep hurt. Her head spun and liquid that was warm seeped down from her hairline into her eyes. But the agony in her stomach was the worst. Like white hot pokers were piercing the lining of her belly.

She could not even curl in the reflexive effort to protect herself when they came down to stand over her, blocking out the light. Blocking out her consciousness. She came too a moment later, brought back by another stab of intense pain. Angelo crouched over her, looking at her oddly, as if she were a butterfly he had caught and pinned living to a board. He reached out and captured a bit of blood from her forehead, looked at it critically, then wiped it off upon her cloak.

"If he hadn't touched you, I might have still attempted to save your soul. You might have been granted redemption. But I'll have nothing to do with a whore tainted by that hell spawn."

She spasmed and wetness flowed down her thighs. Her whole body convulsed. Angelo lifted a brow curiously.

"Its trying to get out. I should help it."

Blood ran down her throat, strangling her when she tried to scream out. His hands hovered above her belly and a glow spread between them. It cast his face in a demonic, orange light. She did scream then and spewed blood in the expulsion of air. It spattered Angelo's face. But then his hands were already bloody. His hands held something small and covered with gore of her own making. It was silent and still and no life pulsed within it.

The tears mixed with the blood. She was weakening so fast that all she could do was whimper when he placed it next to her in the blood stained snow. Then he rose and looked down at her one more time.

"He will regret with his last breath ever challenging me."

Then he was gone. They were all gone and all Yoko saw was the red film of pain and madness that bled over her vision and dragged her into darkness.

She came to with a start and a jarring of pain in her arm. The ache in her belly was numb and hollow. Her thoughts were liquid things that spilled through her mind like water escaping from a sieve. Nothing made sense. Reality was a foreign, distant thing that held little meaning for her. She tried to turn to free her arm and the whole of her body protested. She could barely move. The numbness spread from her belly outwards to all her limbs. Something small and frozen lay beside her. She tilted her head to look down and saw an indistinguishable lump. Small, curled body, with limbs pressed close against the torso. All covered in cold blood. She couldn't understand its presence. She moved her good arm and touched it. Cold, cold, cold in death. Her vision grayed. She came back with the growing realization of what this was. She screamed. A hoarse, pitiful cry of devastation. She mouthed the words of supplication to the goddess that would grant her healing magics. She poured everything she had, everything she was into that frozen little body until there was nothing left for her.

Then she drifted deep into a place where she wasn't certain she might ever come back from. But there was no pain there. And no remorse or tragedy. She fled there eagerly and left the world behind.

Schneider overtook Kall-Su at the foot of the mountains. He had come overland without the benefit of a horse. That meant non stop flying for three days straight, which was no minor feat, but one that covered distance quickly and efficiently. He had come twice the distance they had and they had traveled at a grueling pace, hardly stopping to rest during the night. Kall's tracker was having an easy time of it, no snow having fallen to obscure the path.

Schneider sat down before Kall's horse and stared levelly up at him.

"Have you found her?"

He took a breath. There was cold accusation under the layer of calm Schneider exhibited.

"We're close. The trail is fresh."

Schneider looked at the ground, drew his brows and waved an impatient hand at Kall's party in general. "Well get on with it."

Up the mountain trail, with Schneider in the air above them. It began to snow. Kall cursed the weather, contemplating a spell to drive the snow away when his scout pointed down the trail ahead of them to the remains of a campsite. They galloped down the path towards it. Kall dismounted even as Schneider touched earth to stare balefully at the pit where the fire had been. It was cold, but only by a few hours.

"They were here. We just missed them." His scout said. The man pointed down the trail to the south. "Horses went that way. Maybe fifteen mounted men."

"What's this?" One of his men stood over a section of muddied snow. He walked over and Schneider did and the two of them looked down on what became recognizable as bits of armor and chunks of flesh. The scavengers had been at it. There were the tracks of small feet in the snow around the stain. Kall drew an aborted, horrified breath thinking that it might have been her.

"Its not Yoko." Schneider said grimly, then his eyes turned towards the wood, drawn there by a tiny tendril of power. Kall scented it too, a moment after Schneider was in the air and rocketing over the treelined ridge. He followed suit, leaving his men staring up at them.

Over the ridge and there was nothing but a rocky gully below. He faltered in mid-air when his eyes were drawn to a splash of color at the bottom. A sprawled, twisted figure lying in red stained snow. Schneider was already beside it -- beside her. It was Yoko. Still and broken.

Kall landed a few yards away, stunned. Schneider was bent over her, hair all but obscuring her head and shoulders, crooning to her or himself, Kall wasn't sure which. He cried out and pulled her up into his arms and something small and ghastly rolled away from her limp body. Power radiated from Schneider, focused on Yoko. Kall wasn't sure if she was alive. The snow melted in a radius of fifty yards around where Schneider kneeled, holding Yoko. Kall felt the warmth of healing; of transferred energies so great he had to take a step backwards.

"Kall ..." Schneider didn't look up at him, head still bent over the girl in his arms, he sounded unsteady and weak. Hesitantly Kall approached, knelt beside them, one gloved hand resting in the snow. The little red thing lay not far from his knee. He stared down at it in dismay. He knew what it was. It was clear what it was from the blood staining Yoko's tunic and pants. There was so much blood.

The energies still flowed from Schneider. Like the flow of her blood.

"Get us out of here." Schneider said softly, still not looking up at him. "I don't -- think I can do it."

He couldn't find her. There was life, he felt the weak spark of it burning within her, but it seemed as if her spirit was not attached to it. All there was was that pitiful little core of life and magic that had surged one last time before her strength gave out. Drained her of strength and spirit that she had directed not inwards, for her own salvation but towards another. Towards the lifeless little body that lay curled in the snow beside her. All for nothing for that soul was long gone. Long beyond any hope of help. And she had wasted her strength uselessly.

Silly, silly girl, to throw away her life like that. He squeezed her tight against him, feeling the slow seepage of blood soak through his tunic. He fed strength into her, trying to fix the ills of her body, the mend the rips in flesh and the breaks in bone, to renew the bounty of her spirit and succeeded in all but one. The well of her soul just drank up the energy and spilled it who knew where, for it certainly did not retain it. And he kept giving it to her because he could not fathom the spark of boundless spirit and life that was Tia Note Yoko extinguishing. It was not conceivable or acceptable that she not exist in the same world he did. So he went after her. He went to that dark place, following the thin trail she had left, the only string connecting her still to the mortal world.

He had been there before. The void. A realm where sensation meant nothing, where will was an abstract term. Where nothing mattered but endless, featureless existence. It pulled at awareness, sinking its tendrils into a mind and numbing it, wanting all purpose and thought to cease. He repelled the urge to just drift, repelled the urge to give up the frantic search and the trials of life, rebelled the numbness that seeped into his soul. He hated this place. This in-between. Hated it more than what waited on the other side, because at least there emotion existed. Here there was nothing. But here at least there was a chance of getting her back.

There were a thousand aimless, drifting souls here. The line became blurred and he poured his heart into finding her among the multitudes. Her unique scent, her unique spirit that was precious and irreplaceable. It was there, threatening to break the fragile thread that connected it still to Yoko's physical form. She struggled to break the thread and he engulfed her, stilling the struggle, surrounding her with his own energy, infusing her with his strength to reinforce the line. He felt the panic, the dismay the single driving thought that separated her from all the other souls in attendance. She wanted to pass on into the other realm because the small, sleeping spirit that she had been connected to for so many months had already passed that way.

She fought against him. It was almost overpowering, the desire to follow the infant soul. She almost dragged him with her, almost drained him of the power to bring them both back. She shocked him with her reserves of power. He had to delve into his to subdue her, to pull them back along the thread to the faint glowing light that was life and world and reality.

She shuddered faintly in his arms and he felt dizzy and rubbery with weakness. Relief flooded him. She was there. Deeply unconscious, but her soul rested where it ought, in the precious shell of her body.

"Kall ...." he murmured, shutting his eyes against an all consuming light-headedness. He heard the snow shift nearby; felt Kall's presence, but could not quite gather the strength to lift his eyes and look at him.

"Get us out of here. I don't -- think I can do it."

A hesitant silence, then. "The baby?"

The baby. The payment to Mother that she could take now if she so wished. Did this count? He felt sick contemplating it. He didn't know. If she wanted it, then he would put it where it might be closest to her.

"Bury it." He said.

"All right." Soft reply from Kall. Miserable reply.

He fed her still, because he was afraid she might drift away again, she had been that adamant about it. He wanted her back within the walls of Sta-Veron. He wanted himself clear headed enough to understand what had happened and who had been responsible.

"Can you stand?" Kall asked, putting a hand under his arm. "Let me take her."

"No." Jealous of what he had almost lost, he held her closer and attempted to gain his feet on his own. Then everything became disoriented and his vision grayed. He toppled backwards and Kall caught him and held him there, supporting the both of them.

"Its okay. Its okay." Kall sounded scared. He was shaking more than Schneider was. He lifted the three of them into the air, arms around Schneider who in turn cradled Yoko. The change in orientation, the loss of the solid ground under him did it. He blacked out and the entire time until he opened his eyes again, he felt like he was falling. Only he never hit.

And the snow was gone and there was warmth and softness and a ceiling over his head. He blinked up at it, trying to gather his wits. Taking account of himself and the state of his being.

"Hello." Arshes said. He turned his head to find her sitting in a chair at the side of the bed. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, her expression wan. He tried to think of why he was here and she was there and there was noise in confusion in the hallway outside. The sound of voices and hurrying feet and general clatter.

"How are you?" She asked. He looked back at her, narrowing his eyes, recalling the sensation of falling. Recalling --- other things. He bolted upright, wild eyed and panicked and she rose, crossing the space between chair and bed to place hands on his chest.

"She's all right. She's safe. Its you I worry about, giving so much of yourself. Don't you have the sense to know when to stop?"

"How long? How long have I been asleep?" He swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He was naked under the sheets. Arshes surveyed him clinically.

"Since you passed out? Two days. Kall-Su flew you straightway back. We only just put you to bed."

There were no handy clothes, so he snatched up the sheet and wrapped it about himself as he stalked for the door. She did not try and stop him. She knew him too well for that. She followed him out it and into the hall. Yoko's room seemed the general goal for most of the commotion. The staff was in an uproar. He saw the concern and the fear in the faces of every maid he passed, when they weren't frozen in shock at seeing him march down the hall half naked. There were a great cluster of them outside her door, talking in hushed little groups. Gara stood in the doorway, caressing the Murasume. He glanced over his shoulder at Schneider's approach and stepped aside. His face was grim and deadly.

The bedchamber was less crowded. Only the housekeeper and one of the maids who was delivering a basin of warm water. Yoko was asleep under a mountain of white sheets and blankets. The fire roared warmly, the curtain were pulled, letting in only a slant of sunlight.

One step into the room and he hesitated, afraid to go closer. Afraid to see how fragile and wounded she was. He had healed her injuries, he knew that, but the mind did not always recover as quickly as the body. And he could not heal the mind, only pull the soul back from the precipice of death.

His hands were shaking. Here in front of witnesses, so he crossed his arms and held onto his elbows to hid it. Still weak, he told himself. Just the strain showing. Yoko should be up and bouncing off the walls what with all the energy he had given her. He wasn't up to it. Keitlan pursed her lips at his hesitancy and beckoned him over with an impatient gesture of her hand.

"You've clothes in the wardrobe." She reminded him archly, then patted his arm consolingly. "You're pale as a ghost. You should be back in bed and leaving her to her rest."

"Has she woken?"

"Oh, several times. Took breakfast, which is more than I can say for you. I had to force it on her though, poor child. Hasn't said a word. Not a single word. Just stares into space, then goes back to sleep. Lord Kall-Su said she was badly injured. That she almost died."

"She might have." He said, distracted by the fluttering of Yoko's lids, the trembling of her lips.

"Who did it to her? What monster would do such a thing?" Keitlan's eyes teared over and water spilled down her ruddy cheeks. Schneider opened his mouth, not quite having mulled that question over. It was a very good one. He thought he knew the answer. It made his blood boil. The air around him crackled with a flashflood of anger. Keitlan let out a little squeal and jumped back.

"I'm going out there to look for them." Gara said from the doorway. Arshes stood at his shoulder, her eyes just a grim as the ninja master's.

"Kall's men are still out there, looking for the trail, but if it is the Prophet, then they'll be damned little good against him."

"It was him." Schneider growled. He wanted to vent the anger so bad it hurt. There was the sound of armored men moving the hallway. Kall-Su and his captain of the guard, Kiro. Kiro stood in the hall, Kall stepped into the room.

"You're awake." He looked particularly relieved at that state. There was still worry in his eyes. There ought to be. He'd let an agent of Angelo's spirit Yoko away.

"You let this happen." Schneider hissed, moving around the bed. "You let her ride out of here into that bastard's hands."

"Now wait a minute --" Gara started in defense. Kall's eyes had gone huge.

"I'm sorry --"

"She almost died!!" He lashed out, caught Kall a backhanded blow that withheld nothing of his strength. Kall spun, hit the door frame and leaned there, fingers clutching at it for support, face pressed into the wood. Kiro almost drew his sword, but Arshes put her hand on his to stop the action. Every servant in the hall was ashen faced and shocked.

"What the fuck good are you if you can't even keep track of where she is? Did you see what he did to her?"

"Its not his fault." Gara shouted at him. "How in hell could he have known. She snuck out. She's damned wily enough to get her way when she wants it. She got you out of Meta-Rikan past a whole damn city looking for you, didn't she?"

He didn't want to hear it. He wanted to rage and rant. He wanted to hurt somebody as much as he hurt. "Get out!!" he screamed at them all. "Get the hell out!!"

And they went. Gara put his hands on Kall, who shook them off, pushing himself off the doorframe and turning without a look at Schneider and walking off. Gara cast one not quite scathing glare into the room.

"We're going to find him." He promised. Arshes nodded her agreement to that. The housekeeper was the last to scurry past him. But she paused at the door, as brave or braver than Gara and said with a disapproving frown.

"Its because you love her that you're so angry. But his lordship doesn't deserve your ire." Then she was out the door and shutting it behind her.

He didn't know what to do then, plummeted into silence and solitude. He went to the bedside and stared down at Yoko. Sank down to sit on the edge of it. Touched her smooth cheek.

Months of hearing nothing from the Prophet and he was back. And he dared to attack something of Schneider's. He dared to destroy a life that she and he had created, regardless of the desperate pact with Mother. He had held the notion that he could find a way out of that. He could find a way around anything if he tried hard enough. He recalled a vague memory of the pitiful little corpse in the dirtied snow. He had been too distracted with Yoko to pay it much heed. No bigger than his hand, but perfectly formed. A child of his. His flesh.

A tear trailed down his cheek and he wiped at it furiously. Another followed in its wake. He didn't know whether it was anger or remorse that made him cry. He preferred to think it was anger, but the other tore at his heart with razored claws. He put a hand to his forehead, grasping hair in his fist, incapable of doing more than sit there and shake. It was a new experience. An anger and a hurt that incapacitated him to the point that he could not fly off immediately in a quest for vengeance. He could not in all of his long life, remember anything that hurt as much as this. No wonder Yoko wanted to sleep. It dulled the pain.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath38.htm



	38. Chapter 38

aftermath38

**Thirty-eight**

He sat in the window seat in her room and stared into the emptiness of black night behind thick paned glass. All the day long and she hadn't stirred. Keitlan had come in once or twice to check on her. Had brought him a tray which he had left untouched. She took it away, muttering about the both of them being foolish. He wouldn't leave until he saw her awake and all right. As all right as she could be considering. He was stalled on that notion, to see her healthy and sound and until he did, nothing else seemed to stick in his mind.

And finally, she did wake. Stretched under her blankets and made a little sound of impending consciousness. He padded over to the bedside, dropped to his knees on the thick carpet and waited while she slowly blinked sleep away from her eyes. She focused on him, languidly, dreamily and half smiled. He took a breath of relief -- so much relief flooded through him it was almost a shock. Reached out to push back a strand of her hair that had fallen over her nose. Schneider could not for the life of him form words to say to her. So he just stared, with his hand on her cheek until she drew her brows in puzzlement and whispered.

"What's wrong? You look so melancholy."

What did one say to that innocent question? Stymied again. He let out a little breath of cynical laughter and dropped his head onto his arm. She trailed her fingers down his wrist and arm, and laid them on his head, stroking his hair, still that bemusement on her face.

"Are you talking to me again?" she asked in a little voice. "I don't think I like it much when you don't."

"Yes." He said and rose up a little to pull her closer to the edge of the bed where he could wrap her in his arms and bury his face in her hair. She ran her hands down his shoulders, a gentle, reassuring stroke and murmured against his ear.

"I love you, but we have to be careful of the baby."

Schneider froze, while her fingers lingered on the skin of his back, trying to digest what she had said. What she might have meant. Didn't she know? Hadn't they told her? He wasn't sure he could.

He pulled away a little, staring down at her face. There was a dreamy pleasure in her eyes, in her smile as if everything in the world were perfect. He caught her hands in his, squeezing gently.

"Yoko --- you lost the baby. Remember?"

Her smile faltered a little. Her pupils seemed to expand. Her gaze went right through him, as if he were not even there. She pulled her hands out of his grasp, shifting to sit up, to swing her legs over the side of the bed. She rose, white nightshift flowing about her slender body and stood for an unsteady moment next to where he knelt, then she walked towards the fire and the chair there. There was a basket of sewing on the floor beside it. She sat down and picked up a folded piece of material. She held it up and smiled back at him.

"See? This will be a summer smock. I've got the material for winter ones, but I haven't gotten the chance to start on them yet. It'll be spring before she's born anyway."

"Yoko --" His voice cracked a little. "Yoko, don't you remember what happened? The mountains?"

"I've been thinking for weeks about names. I was thinking of naming her after my mother, if that's all right with you. Thelsa. It would make father happy."

"How do you know," he asked leadenly, in the face of her refusal to acknowledge the truth. "That it will be a girl?"

"I had a dream." She laughed. "I know its silly, but I think it heralded the truth."

The truth. How far had she gone, in her desperation to join that infant soul? Had he not brought everything that was essential back? Had he failed that miserably?

The door opened and Keitlan came in with a covered pot of tea. She stopped in the threshold, taking in the sight of Yoko sitting by the fire, of him by the bed with a look that must have been horror on his face. She walked into the room, a practical, reasonable woman and sat the tea service down on the table next to Yoko's chair. Yoko didn't acknowledged her presence. Schneider couldn't take his eyes from Yoko.

"She should be in bed." Keitlan said, concern in her face. She patted the girl's shoulder, took her elbow gently in her hand and urged her up.

"Put that down now." The housekeeper suggested when Yoko seemed to want to take the unfinished baby smock with her. Schneider rose, keeping the sheet, which he'd sat in all day, about him, letting the woman guide Yoko past him and back into bed. Keitlan cast him a worried look and frowned.

When she had Yoko settled, she caught his arm and said in a voice that brooked no argument. "You come with me."

Numbly, he did, until she shut the door and scolded. "You'll do her no good looking like you do. Go eat. Get yourself together, man."

"She doesn't know." He said. "I tried to tell her, but she ignored me. She talks as if she still carries the baby."

Keitlan drew her brows, glancing back at the closed door. She took a breath, a long, uncertain one. "Its -- its not uncommon for a woman who's miscarried to deny it happened. I've seen it before. She's had a terrible shock. Gods know she's had a terrible shock. Give her a little time. That's all she needs."

Schneider felt as if the fates were conspiring against him. The disorientation clung stubbornly, his mind reeled with the image of her dreamy smile and her declaration that they had to be careful of the baby. I love you, but we have to be careful of the baby. And he had thought for so fleeting a moment that she was all right. That everything would be okay. As if anything, since he had come back to the world had been okay.

He went to the only other place he knew to find solace, when he felt so lost. He went to Arshes. He found her polishing armor in her room, her newly oiled sword out of its scabbard on the bed. Her war armor. She hadn't worn it since she'd come here.

"We're leaving in the morning." She said, to break the silence when he only stood leaning against her doorframe.

"Where?" he asked. She frowned at him.

"To search the mountains. Kall-Su left this afternoon with a party. Gara and I leave in the morning. We'll find whoever did this."

"Oh. You didn't tell me."

"We did." She said slowly. "You were -- upset."

"Angelo did it." He was so very certain of that.

"Probably." She agreed. She carefully laid the piece of armor she'd been working on down. "How is Yoko?"

"I don't know." Complete honesty there. "She seems to be --- in denial."

"Darshe, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. For her. For you." And there was honesty there as well. She held out a hand to him. He went to her, sat on the edge of her bed amidst her armor and weaponry while she scooted over to wrap her arms about him, hugging him. He sat there with her weight and warmth against his back and thought about all the deaths he would bring down upon Angelo's head. He wondered if in his rage he would be able to prolong the Prophet's life long enough to inflict the pain he wanted to inflict.

"It'll be all right." She said. "We'll make it better. We'll find him and make him pay for what he did to her."

"It was because of me. He hurt her, but it was aimed at me."

"And he'll suffer for it." There was righteous indignation in her voice. She would, no matter what offense he gave her, defend him to the death.

"I love you, Arshes."

He felt her sigh against him and whisper. "I know."

Arshes and Gara left with a contingent of Sta-Veron troops who were well versed in the ways of the mountains. For two days Schneider watched Yoko drift aimlessly about the castle, for the most part hearing only what she wanted to hear, seeing only what she wanted to see. People spoke to her and she stared through them as if they were ghosts. To her they might have been. She stared at Schneider half the time, as if he weren't there. Only occasionally did she deign to see him and then she might only smile dreamily at him, almost in welcome, as if she hadn't seen him in weeks or months, and remark about some trivial matter. Or comment on the baby. He wished he hadn't had Kall bury it. Maybe if that pitiful little corpse were here -- if she could see it with her own eyes -- she might be forced back to the reality she belonged. Keitlan had said give her time. Keitlan was beginning to frown and wring her hands in dismay now when Yoko roamed the castle.

When he asked her what she recalled of her journey to the mountains. Of who had hurt her, she went all the more vague. It was like he had missed a piece of her soul, when he'd brought her back. She was not complete.

The wrath began to build. He had told himself he would see her well before he abandoned her to seek his vengeance, but he was not so certain she would get well. A black, seething frustration built inside him. A regret that ached with all the persistence of slow death. He had a need to see Angelo writhe. He had a need to destroy his foe that ate at him and became an all consuming passion.

Two days and he had stayed by her side as long as he was able, without doing something. His Shitenno were out hunting his enemy and he could no longer endure not having his own hand involved. He found Yoko before he sat out, hoping she might look up at him with clear recognition in her eyes. With reason and grief that she had not so far shown. She leaned against the sill of the window in her room, arms wrapped about her, face pale from the pale morning light that shone through the panes of glass. He put a gloved hand on her shoulder, brushing back hair and she hardly flinched. Only stared outside at nothing. There was nothing to see.

"Yoko. I'll find him. I swear it." He promised. She began humming. A child's song. A lullaby mother's sang to put their babies to sleep. He withdrew his hand, shutting his eyes for a moment, at a loss with her. Helpless to repair something so fragile as a mortal mind.

Then he clenched his fists, and whirled away from her, letting the anger flow back to wash away the moment of weakness. Weakness and pain were no longer an option. There was only relentless revenge.

Snow coated peaks and valleys. Trails that were indistinguishable to the untrained eye as anything other than one more patch of white covered earth, treacherous and deadly if one took the wrong step. Air was that was gray and frost laden, producing flurries of snow at a moment's notice. Trees that bent like old crones from the weight of powder and ice on their limbs. Wind that blew through the mountains like a banshee, obscuring their own trail moments after they'd passed, much less tracks days old. All this they had against them and yet the mountaineers and trackers in the Ice Lord's service seemed undaunted.

Gara began to develop a healthy respect for those men who made the cold mountains their home. He had lost track of how many days they'd been out here, looking for trace of an enemy on their doorstep. Perhaps a week. Maybe less. How many miles of mountainous landscape they had searched he could not begin to fathom. They had begun at the campsite Kall-Su and Schneider had found and worked their way outwards from that point. The trackers found traces here and there of the passage of men, but no solid trail. It was easy to hide in the mountains in the midst of winter, Captain Kiro had said, when they had all convened in the base camp, coincidence bringing them back at the same night. There were a dozen search parties combing the peaks and gullies and all the rocky ground in-between that could be traveled by man. Kall-Su had made it clear to his men that if the enemy was discovered, none of them were to engage, but to follow discreetly and send word back to either Gara and Arshes or himself.

The men understood. Having heard rumors of the nature of the enemy. Tomorrow they would move the base camp further into the mountains and expand the search. They sat in a tent, Gara, Arshes, Kall-Su, his captain and the leaders of the various search parties, studying a meticulously drawn map of the mountains. Witchlight illuminated the interior of the tent casting them all in a cold, bluish light. Kiro and Kall-su discussed the area's they had already covered and contemplated the likeliest places to send parties out on the morn. Kall-Su traced a route with his finger to the west and Kiro agreed that it would be a probable course to follow. They mapped other routes to follow, assigning them to the weather bitten men under Kiro.

Arshes bent over the map, her armored shoulder brushing Gara. One slim finger tapped an area to the south west of where they sat.

"What's this?"

"Impassable." Kiro said. "No reason to bother, horses nor men couldn't travel it."

She drew her brows, her ears twitching in thought.

"What?" Gara asked, recognizing the look of contemplation.

"I don't know. A feeling." She said. "I want to look there."

"It's a waste of time." Kall-Su looked up at her.

"Perhaps." She agreed. "I'll go anyway."

"I'll go with you." Gara said. Arshes stared at him a moment, dark eyes unreadable, then inclined her head in acceptance. Kall-Su gave them both impatient looks, before expelling a breath of air and continuing to arrange the search patterns of his men.

In the morning, not long after the sun had begun peeking over the tips of the mountains, casting its bright rays over a landscape of gray and white, men started to leave camp. Gara and Arshes set out on their own. Slow traveling. The horses seemed to intrinsically know the places that offered the best footing, even through deep snow. They trusted in the wisdom of their mountain bred mounts and let them wind their way up and down the trails at their own pace and their own discretion. A great vista of white slopes spread before them. Steep, snow covered mountain that plummeted down to a valley thick with dense forest. It was a crater shaped vale, with jagged ridges along all it's sides. No easy route down. No route at all for the horses. They were at the low side and it was still thousands of yards down to the forest. To the west, a great field of uninterrupted white ran up to a cloud obscured peak overhead. The wind whistled down from those heights, bringing with it the occasional swirl of blown snow. Other than that the vale was stilted in silence. The jangle of tack and armor as they shifted in the saddle to observe the valley was a foreign intrusion upon the quiet.

"No safe path down." Gara observed softly.

Arshes didn't say anything. She swung down from her horse, tossing the reins up to Gara. Her cloak fluttered around her, her hair obscured her face. She readjusted her sword on her back, so it wouldn't get in her way and stepped over the ridge. Her foot slid down into deep snow and she whispered a word and the wind seemed to gather around her and buoy her up. When she moved thereafter down the slope, her feet barely broke the crust of snow. Gara cursed under his breath.

He followed her, albeit by more natural means. His descent was more destructive to the pristine covering of snow. He left long, ragged tracks, but it was a controlled decent. Almost graceful; he utilizing all the balance and deftness of foot a lifetime of training had ingrained within him. She was quite a distance ahead of him. Halfway between the ridge and the treeline below.

High above there was a distant crack. A boom that echoed down over and over into the cone shaped vale. Gara stopped, knee deep in the snow, eyes drawn upward at the sound. An explosion of snow billowed out, spitting chunks of rock and ice in an arch over the vale. Not magic. He would have sensed that. Just sudden destructive power that seemed to come from nowhere. The pelting of debris didn't come near them. Just thunked into the slope a thousand of feet above.

Silence. A breaths worth of intense silence and then the mountain side seemed to crumble. High up where the explosion had originated the snow started to slide downward. A gradual, lazy degeneration at first, that quickly culminated into a roaring, frothing avalanche of snow and rock and dirt. He cried out Arshes name, but was too far behind her to do anything but scramble pell nell along the slope away from the avalanche.

He ran, sliding and slipping and the monster was behind him, flooding the valley with a roar so loud it was deafening. It didn't matter how fast he ran, it would catch him. Bits and chunks of snow hit his back. He cried out and drew the Murasume as he stumbled up the slope. Lost his footing and went down to his knees, twisted onto his back and stabbed the blade out before him, calling forth its power in desperation. A gust of wind swept past him. A lacing of force trembled under his hands and the blade expelled a seismically jarring wave of power that cut into the wall of tumbling white crashing down on him. The onslaught of snow didn't slow, but it veered around him, cut in two by the power of the Murasume. But only the brunt of it. The edges came pouring down, smothering him with snow and ice and weight. The insulating whiteness buried him and cut off the rumbling sound of the avalanche's fury. Cut off the gray of day light. Gara ceased for a while to know anything.

Then came back to awareness with a panic and growing sense of claustrophobia. His body was immobile, trapped beneath snow the depth of which he could only imagine. He couldn't breath. His fingers still clutched the hilt of the Murasume. It felt hot all the way through his glove. The forces within it trembled and he willed them to release.

Snow exploded outwards, clearing a space where sky glowered balefully down. Gara had never been so happy to see dour, snow threatening clouds. He clawed his way up out of the pit the Murasume had created and knelt on the new, uneven landscape of white. White littered with the gray of stone and the brown of dirt. There was a bald spot on the mountain where the explosion had stripped it of snow. The resulting avalanche had filled the vale with what had rested on the slopes of the mountain. It had covered half the forest at the bottom. The trees bent at awkward angles or uprooted entirely, snow half way up their trunks.

Gara scanned the lower slopes desperately for some sign of life. He was too short of breath to bellow out her name, so he began to slide down slope to search for her. Something blazed bright in the sky. An arc of energy that sizzled through the air like a comet and hit the earth some two hundred yards from the edge of the wood. It flared so brightly, Gara had to shield his eyes. When he could see again there was a faintly glowing sphere of power where the blast had hit. A crackling growing haze of energy that indicated a power there that did not take kindly to being attacked by both nature and magic.

Arshes was alive and defending herself then. But where was the attacker. He scanned the heights. The sky itself for sign, but saw no one. Then from the woods behind Arshes Nei movement drifted across the snow. Gara started running as quickly as he could, calling out for her to beware behind her.

She might have heard him. The shield pulsed, and then a slash of power arched out and hit it from the woods. Gara was close enough to see her clearly now, protected by her shield. She lifted her hands and wordlessly cried out the locution of a spell. A lightning ball formed before her and crashed into the abused wood. Trees splintered. Snow melted. A trench of snow and earth was created.

Silence. He was almost to her. She let her shield drop, and he saw her clearly, covered with snow and dirt and as bedraggled as he was. There was a bit of blood running down from her lip. Don't let your guard down, he thought. The first blast didn't come from the woods.

Then he did see movement from above. A moments glimpse of a dark form before light obscured it and between one breath and the next a wave of energy so strong it knocked Gara from his feet and threw him back a dozen feet, hit the spot Arshes had been standing. Gara cried out in rage, horror, regret. Half buried in snow he struggled up, saw a pale flash of face against dark flowing robes and hood. And knew that face. Knew those damned fanatical eyes and that holier than thou expression. He screamed out in fury and the gaze flickered to him. A hand reached out, as if contemplating the casting of a spell. Then withdrew and the airborne form began to sped away, over the ridge to the west and gone in the haze of cloud and mist stirred up by the avalanche.

He couldn't care about that now. He couldn't care about anything but sliding down the slope to the blast area where Arshes had been. The snow was gone from a circular space some fifty yards wide. The earth had been gouged and ripped. At first he didn't see her. She was so covered in mud and dirt and her cream colored cloak and armor was camouflaged. She was whole, at least mostly so that he could see, other than charred armor and tattered cloak and tunic. She started to move before he reached the edge of the spell blast. A man stepped from the edge of the wood. Big man, made even larger by the bulk of winter gear and armor. Spiky brown hair and odd green eyes. Gara knew him. The captain of the Prophet's guard. He lifted sword and hand and something elemental gathered in the air before him, then raced towards the recovering sorceress. Gara cried out and leapt, bringing the Murasume down in a arch that sliced through the speeding elemental force and ripped it asunder. He felt the impact all the way to his bones and hit the ground with less grace than he might have liked. He crouched between Arshes and Sinakha, one hand on the ground, the other holding the Murasume as a shield between them.

"Here to finish the work your master did such a halfassed job at?" He hissed. Sinakha's face didn't move. No emotion crossed his eyes. He stepped out from the trees and the sword came up into a fighting position. So he wanted a little hand to hand, did he? Gara was up to that.

Sinakha made the first move. Came at him so quick that he was hard to follow and sliced low, aiming at Gara's legs. Gara forced his aching body into action, sprang up and into the air, landing in the mud in one movement and launching back up and towards his opponent in the next, slicing from above. Sinakha blocked it. Gara came down and they circled, testing each other's strength and swiftness. They traded blows, steel glancing off of steel and Gara thought that the blade Sinakha wielded was no common sword. The man was quick and he broadcast nothing of his intentions. Damned good swordsman. Damned good. Sixty seconds into it and Gara thought he had never faced better.

Slash. Clang. Reflect the blow. Feint to the left and score a thin slice across Sinakha's arm. No blood drawn. Just a slice through the layers of clothing. Crossing of blades and Sinakha pressed close, using his shoulder to shove Gara back a step. His boot slipped on snow and he lost balance. Sinakha sliced towards his belly and he just fell backwards to avoid it, and found himself at a disadvantage on his back. He called up a burst of power from the Murasume and Sinakha leapt aside to avoid it. It gave Gara the space to gain his feet. But, since he had called magic into the fray, Sinakha seemed content to take the battle to new limits. His blade glowed. Power gathered at the tip, a dozen little spots of energy. They arched towards Gara and he twisted this way and that to avoid them. He couldn't avoid them all. White hot pain lanced through his thigh and along his ribs. His leg gave out and he went down.

Sinakha did smile then. A cold, emotionless twist of his lips. He summoned the energies again and this time pointed the blade towards Arshes, who was barely beginning to shake off the effects of the blast that had taken her down. Gara surged up, raced towards her even as the power was released, slammed into her and bowled her over, protecting her with his own body. Felt hot little fingers of pain lance into him and wasn't even sure if his meager flesh could protect her; if the little orbs of power wouldn't eat right through him and into her. It felt as if they were. It felt as if his flesh were burning up.

She twisted under him, hissing and cursing with disorientation, with sudden awakening to imminent destruction. She pushed Gara off and he rolled onto his back, hurting so bad he saw red mixed in with the dancing spots of light. Or maybe that was blood in his eyes. He didn't know.

"Are you insane?" Arshes was screaming and it occurred to him that she was yelling at him. Sinakha stood at the edge of the clearing, sword at ready. Arshes cried out the words to a spell. The air crackled with it. Sinakha was too close to avoid it this time. He must have been aware of this. He leapt backwards into the cover of trees, disappearing into the shadows with the skill of a ninja trained. Gara lost track of him. Arshes had to have, but she released the spell anyway and it tore through the already ravaged forest. Whether she got him or not, Gara didn't know. His vision was wavering. He rolled onto his side and felt the places his flesh had been pierced protest with the movement. Where was the Murasume? He'd lost it sometime between the time he'd jumped to protect Arshes and when Sinakha's spell bursts had hit him.

He heard Arshes gain her feet. Heard her cursing soundly.

"Gods damn it! How did this happen?" she cried.

"It was a set up." He muttered and tasted blood. Not a cut lip, but coming up from his throat. Punctured lung maybe.

She whirled and hit the ground next to him, her knees pressing into his arm. "How?" she demanded. "How could he have know we'd be here?"

"He called you." It seemed simple enough. Schneider said Angelo was a mind witch among his other talents. He had gotten to Arshes somehow and given her the urge to come here. She'd certainly had no explanation as to why she thought it important to search a place more experienced mountaineers declared a waste of time.

He shuddered, feeling his body beginning to go shocky.

"Gara?" She leaned over him, blocking out the light. "Are you aright?"

He couldn't answer just then, too busy coughing up blood. She cried out at the sight of the red froth dribbling down his chin.

"How bad?" she demanded, pulling him into her lap, running her hands down his front to find the wounds. He couldn't feel her fingers and thought that was a terrible sign.

"Bad enough." He coughed more blood. His head was spinning now, interfering with his thinking.

"You stupid, stupid man. Why did you do it? Why sacrifice yourself for me?" She cried. "I never asked it of you."

Wasn't it obvious to her? It had always been so obvious to him.

"Because I love you." He wouldn't have said it if he hadn't been so lightheaded. She stared down at him in horror.

"I'm getting to old for this." He muttered, to negate the earlier statement. To say anything to wash it from her memory. Fool. Fool. He would die a fool with her looking at him as if he were the greatest idiot in the world.

She bent over him and he thought silent tears ran down her dark cheeks. "How could you?" she sobbed. "What have I ever done to warrant it? I've devoted my whole life to Darshe -- everything I am only to please him. How could anyone ever love me?"

"You -- don't give yourself enough -- credit. You think -- you're nothing without -- him. You're wrong. I don't matter. He doesn't. Nobody does. Do me a favor and learn to love yourself as much as I do and I'll die content."

"You will NOT!" She screamed at him. "How dare you say this to me and presume to avoid the consequences by dying?"

She held his face between her hands and glared down at him. She sniffed back tears. He could see her gathering strength. She was staring down at him as if he were a curiosity in a traveling sideshow.

"You have gray hairs." She whispered in awe. He almost laughed at that observation. Sure enough, over the last year or two he had began to get a peppering of gray. In the crowd he hung with it was an anomaly. But then he was only human. "You've been my best friend, Gara. I never had a friend before you. Somebody who never asked anything of me. . . . Damnit, why didn't you ever tell me?"

"I rather like to avoid - - self inflicted pain -- present situation excluded. Your heart belongs to another."

"And his is as fickle as the day is long. Oh, Gara --"

His strength was failing fast. She had never been that good at healing. "Arshes, find the Murasume."

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   [1]: aftermath39.htm



	39. Chapter 39

aftermath39

Thirty-nine

Schneider came up the mountain in the midst of a slow moving party of men and horses who treated the landscape as if it were some fragile, easily annoyed giant who might retaliate against them at any moment for their trespass. They spoke of respect for the winter and the highlands and Schneider fumed darkly, holding nothing but contempt for the mountains that hid his enemy. They did not daunt him. What blocked his path, he removed. He might have flown here and searched from a more lofty angle, but he didn't know how long it might take and he did not wish his strength depleted when he did find Angelo.

They found tracks in the lower ranges leading north towards the plain lands and wasted time following only to discover it was a band of trappers down from the heights taking their furs to Sta-Veron for trade. They had seen no sign of anyone other than themselves in the mountains. Damned annoying. Schneider urged his men onwards, eager to discover what those who had been scouring the range for days had found out.

The base camp was in the process of moving when they rode in. Most of the supplies were packed and already on their way deeper into the mountains. The only men remaining were a few scouts left behind to advise any stragglers coming into camp of its new location. They had no good news for Schneider.

He stomped about, kicking snow, undecided what course to take. Something prickled the hairs at the back of his neck. Some sense of magic being used. He could not place the flavor of the spell, but it was powerful in nature. He jabbed a finger in the general direction he felt the magic emanating from.

"That way? What's that way?"

"That's the route lord Gara and Lady Nei took." One of the scouts said. Something more familiar tickled at his awareness. A spellcasting of an intimately familiar nature. Arshes.

He cursed under his breath and rose from the earth, leaving the startled men beneath. Damn. Damn. He had waited too long to come out here. Waited futily for Yoko to come to her senses and now the Prophet had found something else of his.

It was over before he was in the air ten minutes. The magic just stopped and there was nothing to guide him. He tried to find Arshes' mental presence but that unique plain was crowded with static and confusion. If she were agitated or concentrating on something else she would not be receptive. If he'd had more time, he could track her. He kept to the direction he had first sensed the magic and soon realized how mammoth a job searching these mountains really was. Even from the air it was nearly impossible to see past the trees. And where there were no trees the slopes were laden with crevices and shadows. Only the broad slopes of snow gladly gave up their secrets and there was little chance of men who did not wish to be seen traversing those.

He was lost and aimlessly searching, anger turning into dread of what he might discover when he did find her. Then he saw the dark shapes of two horses picking their way down a trail. Two riders. One horse being lead by a guide rope attached to the first. He swooped down, not caring it was friend or foe and the lead horse tossed its head in fright, sensing his presence before the riders did.

Arshes Nei almost reached for her sword. She came that close then aborted the movement as her eyes focused on him. Her mouth opened soundlessly. Her face was dirty and blood smeared.

"What happened?" he demanded, stalking to her side, lying a hand on her stirrup.

"Oh, Darshe. Help Gara." She cried, flinging a leg over the saddle and practically knocking him back a step in her efforts to get down and rush back to the second horse. He hadn't spared a glance for Gara. Now he did. The ninja master sat slumped in the saddle, his hands clutching the length of the Murasume, his head bowed. He was covered in blood. He reeked of it. He could feel the living presence of the Murasume struggling the anchor its master's life-force -- to shore up his failing body.

"Goddamnit." He hissed and pulled Gara down. The big man toppled unresisting and Schneider half stumbled under the dead weight before Arshes added her support and together they got him to the ground. His eyes were rolled up behind his lids and his face a pale imitation of his normal skin tone. If one discounted the blood. There were half a dozen mortal wounds piercing his body. He should have been dead. It was probably only thanks to his link with the arcane blade that he still breathed.

"What the hell happened, Arshes?" He ground out, summoning healing forces, lending some of his own strength for the second time in a week. Gara was stubborn. He might have been near death but he held tenaciously to life. He wasn't nearly the battle Yoko had been. But, Yoko hadn't had the Murasume refusing to let her soul break from her body. The damn thing was so insistent on protecting its master that it almost rebuffed Schneider's efforts to heal him.

Arshes was crying. Arshes looked as shaken as he'd ever seen her. She was weak and injured, but not to the extent Gara was. He could see it in her eyes, in the way she held herself.

"He was waiting for us." She whispered. "He -- he got into my head I think and guided me to the valley. And the mountain came down upon us. He hit me with a spell I wasn't familiar with. Gara saved me. Let him be all right."

"He's too tough to die. Was it Angelo?" He had to ask, even though he knew the answer.

She nodded, miserable, clutching her hands at her chest. "And his captain. Sinakha. He's the one who hurt Gara. I'll kill him."

"Fine. Fine. Where did Angelo go?"

"I don't know. I didn't see."

"He went west." Gara whispered, eyes still shut.

"Oh, Gara." Arshes sniffed. "You're okay."

"I feel like shit. He's using something other than magic. Old stuff, maybe. It had the feel of something of the ancients when the side of the mountain blew."

"Technology of the ancients." Arshes whispered as if she were bringing up something sacred and horrifying.

"Explosives." Schneider scowled, thinking of the wards he had worn on his wrists that had been as much technology as magic. A twisted, impossible blending of the two. Technology was anathema to magic. Yet Angelo used both. Technology and things of its ilk could cripple a creature of magic, yet Angelo's magic was stolen.

"What did he want?" Arshes asked. "Why draw us out there?"

"To get at me." Schneider deduced, clenching his fists. He recalled what the Prophet had said to him once when he'd been at the man's mercy in the cell under the temple. That he would destroy what Schneider loved if he could not destroy Schneider himself. And what else had he promised? If he couldn't have Schneider ----

"Where is Kall?"

Arshes stared at him, wide eyed. Gara slitted open his lids. "West. He's searching west."

It was slow work, combing the mountains. Meticulous work. Dangerous. Kall-Su had lost a man the day before to a misstep on a narrow mountain trail. He cursed the carelessness. The responsibility ate at him. Just as the responsibility of what had happened to Yoko did. Schneider was right. It was his fault. It was his city and his province and he had blindly let something as foul as the Prophet slip into it. He had let his guard down and an innocent had paid. Paid in blood and paid in the life of an unborn child. He could not erase the vision of that baby from his mind. He tried and it came back all the stronger.

_Schneider was right._ It was his fault and he would die before he let the Prophet escape these mountains. They were following what might have been a trail now. Through a narrow valley and up a non-existent path where his trackers had found freshly broken limbs. It might be nothing more than the passage of a large animal. But it was the best they had found in days.

One of his trackers came excitedly down the trail from above. The remains of a camp had been found. A trail under the shelter of the trees on the far side of the ridge. He was listening to these details when the sense of powerful magic being used scratched at his awareness. He lost track of what his man was saying, staring eastward, trying to concentrate on the nature of the magic. Then it was gone, swallowed up by the eather and he stood blinking while his men stared at him.

"My Lord?" His lead tracker prompted.

"How old a camp?" he asked, distracted.

"Not more than a day. We can follow the trail easily."

A choice. The fading aroma of a magic that might or might not signify the presence of their enemy or the concrete trail of a camp and tracks. If he went after that magic, the trail might be obscured by wind and snow. His men might come upon something they were not equipped to handle.

"Show me the camp." He decided, and his men eagerly started up the trail.

A fire pit, only powdered with blown snow. The charred remains of a fire blackening it's bottom. The trampled snow and frozen manure from many horses. A clear trail ahead. They took it at a fast pace. Through the forest and along a gully clear of trees and walled by rocky slopes on one side and the slow rise of a mountain on the other. The trail led up the gradual slope. An easy climb for mountain horses. Something glinted in the light from the top of the ridge. One of his men pointed upwards and Kall-Su shielded his eyes to make it out. But it was gone. He waved a hand at his men to halt. He wanted to see what awaited them at the top of the rise.

To the discontent of his mount, he rose out of the saddle and into the air. A hundred feet up with the wind whipping at hair and cloak. Senses stretched taught for the slightest hint of magic being summoned. And there was nothing. Just the wind and the overpowering sense of the mountain's age; of the deep rooted power that lay beneath this rocky earth.

There was a crack in the air. Something hit his shoulder, like a stone being hurled at him. But of course there was no one on the ground that could hurl a stone so hard and so fast. The echoes of the crack sounded while he was trying to figure out what had happened. Before they faded it occurred to him that the shoulder was numb and he looked down and saw a clean hole through the armor plating. He stared at it in shock, lifting a gloved hand to touch the perimeter of it.

Crack. Impact hit him again and this time it spun him in mid-air, burning through his side like a fire heated poker and stealing his wit. Blood stained his tunic and he could not quite grasp how. Something leaden and impenetrable lodged within his flesh.

Crack. The third hit and he lost control of the flight spell and plummeted like a rock to the earth. Hit snow and rolled, incoherent with the source of the pain that had invaded him. Not magic. Not mundane. He couldn't summon magic that would combat the things that he knew -- he knew lodged in his body. It wouldn't respond, as if it was repelled by whatever had struck him.

His men were running towards him. He could see them from his sprawled angle, half buried in the snow. Crack. One of them stumbled and fell. Crack. Another went down. Crack. The skull of a man was shattered. Crack. Crack. He couldn't see what happened. His vision was graying. He couldn't think. He dropped his head into the snow, sick and close to passing out.

Crunch, crunch of boots in the snow. He forced his eyes open and struggled to prop himself up. His right arm wouldn't work at all. His left was strengthless and rubbery. Robes in the snow so close he couldn't see more than an expanse of gray cloth. The figure moved, turning as another man trudged down the slope carrying a long, metal object. Metal cylinder, wooden base. He'd seen pictures. A gun. A gun, when there hadn't been guns for hundreds of years. He half recognized the man who carried it.

The man in the robes crouched. Hands reached out to roll him over. He could not at the moment resist them. He tried to organize his thoughts enough to cast a spell. It was hard with the dizziness and pain.

"No. No." The Prophet smiled down at him, placing his hand over Kall's eyes, cutting out the sight of him. "Not just yet. We'll play at sorcery later. Go to sleep."

He couldn't fight it. The fingers of something that was not quite magic and not quite _not _-magic were inside his head, weaving in and out of channels made by disorientation and shock and they just flicked a switch and shut him down. At the very least, the pain was gone.

For two days they searched without a trace until several of the horses wondered back down the trail in search of food and warmth and Schneider invaded the animal mind to make them backtrack the way they had come. Then all they found were frozen corpses littering the side of a mountain slope. Kiro was so distraught his hands shook as he went from body to body, looking for sign of his lord. Schneider knew he wasn't there. Schneider remembered Angelo's promise.

He stood in the midst of a field of corpses killed by a means that should not have existed in this day and age and seethed. Events were beginning to spin out of his control. A series of tragedies that he was continually too late to avert. Yoko hurt and so distressed her mind was not all there. Arshes and Gara almost killed. Kall-Su just gone. His allies bruised and reduced and the bastard wouldn't come straight at him. He hit from behind out of shadows and raced back into their depths like a thief in the night.

There was a bloody spot in the snow where no corpse lay. A single glove rested half buried in the snow. Tracks led to the spot, but none led away. Schneider stared down silently.

"Search the other side of the ridge." Kiro commanded and men started to climb it's heights. Schneider didn't bother to tell them it was a waste of time. He couldn't at the moment talk. He was so incensed that his heart hammered painfully against his ribs. Angelo had hit everything that mattered to him in this world. There was nothing left, save those wounded ones that had already been hurt. Gara and Arshes were safe at base camp. Yoko back at Sta-Veron. God knew where Kall was. The devil would have a luckier guess. He wanted the others where he could protect them. Having them scattered only increased the chances of Angelo striking at them again. If they were all safe, then he could think about how to track Kall down. He'd had no success finding Angelo after the Prophet had disappeared at the eastern range. Not the slightest trace. But Kall he might be able to find, whether Angelo wished it or not. And if he found Kall, he would find the Prophet.

The place without windows was astir. More than Lily had ever seen it. More than when the master had returned weeks and weeks ago after his long absence. Nothing so much to cause rampart gossip from the somber denizens of this place, but something to set them aflutter nonetheless. Even if she asked, no one would tell her, so she followed a group of acolytes down the stairs and through the corridors only to catch a glimpse of the master himself striding into a room. The acolytes all deferred to him, casting their gazes down. Lily could barely see past shoulders and torsos, but the master's shadow, the silent green eyed man who always skulked at his heels, this time did so with a burden.

All she caught was an image of blue cloak, a quick gleam of armor. A limp hand that trailed blood and then the master's shadow was into the room and the door closed on all the curious. Lily shuddered. In all the time she had been here, no one else had been brought. No one that didn't worship the master's every word. No one that was not one of the silent acolytes that drifted like ghosts in these cold halls.

She moved away, like the others, not wanting to be caught prying into the master's business. But she was curious. Deeply curious at the anomaly that had been brought into the tedious pattern the place without windows had always followed.

The master sent for her eventually, and she came to his rooms warily with her instrument in hand. He smiled serenely at her, face aglow with pleasure. Play a song for me, he asked. A joyful song. And she did.

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   [1]: aftermath40.htm



	40. Chapter 40

aftermath40

Forty

He became aware by degrees. First of discomfort. Of a dull ache that seemed to bore through his side and into his back. Then of the throbbing of blood behind his eyes. The steady thump thump of his heart beat that seemed to drive right into his brain with its deafening resonance. Other smaller pains that demanded less attention than the first two. Of rough sheets under his back. Of moist, cool air that touched his skin. Of a cavernous, silent weight that lurked over and around him; that his senses, on the verge of wakening could not pierce.

He opened his eyes to darkness. It took a moment to realize he did not know where he was. No familiar place most certainly. He started, bewildered and pain lanced through his side. His shoulder ached dully. He drew an unsteady breath, curled about his knees in efforts to drive the pain away. Trying to clear his head enough to heal it. The magic came erratically, as though it were hesitant to respond to his will. He pushed the pain away. Healed the wounds in his flesh with greater effort than he could recall ever having exerted in similar tasks. His head still throbbed. He called a witchlight and it came at his bidding, showing a small stone room devoid of windows, boasting only the cot he lay upon and a rough stone alter with the symbol of the one god carved into its face.

He pushed off from the side of the cot, wincing. Mind recalling the pain he had washed away from his body even if it was physcially gone. He was bereft of armor. Bereft of everything save trousers and linen undertunic and those were crusted with blood. He recalled the mountain. He recalled the echoing cracks of gun fire. Gun fire. He'd had pieces of lead from a technology of old lodged within him. Someone had taken them out. He had certainly not done it in his healing. Those dead little pieces of ancient weaponry had stymied his attempts.

He took a breath and tried the door. He expected it locked. He expected to have to magic his way past it. But it opened easily, creaking on rusty hinges. He stood in the doorway, staring out at a dark stone passage. The ceiling was low, the walls close and thick. There was something about the stone of the place -- floor, ceiling, walls - - that was odd. Something that was muffling and ancient and foreboding. There was power in those stones. Dormant, subliminal power that was layered so thickly as to be impenetrable. Wards, he thought. Wards on the walls for some purpose. Wards in the stone of this place. Wards so strong that it must have taken centuries to layer them. To build upon their effectiveness. He put fingers to the wall to try and determine their purpose, but they were silent and featureless in their rest. Only whatever they were meant to protect would trigger their energies.

He did not know which way to go. This place lent him no clues. Try as he might, he could sense nothing but stillness from within and without. Either that or the wards muffled his inquiry. There were steps leading up. Up was a good direction. He felt as if the weight of the world were resting above him. There was a hall at the end of the steps. A gathering place perhaps with tall ceiling and thick columns running along the sides of the wall. It was still oppressive and dark, despite the size. There were torches burning at the far end. What looked to be the nave of a chapel resided in the flickering shadow. A figure knelt before the alter, head bowed, hands clasped before him.

Kall-Su stared, needing the way out. Needing confirmation that this was not some fever dream. He took a step down the aisle and the kneeling figure shifted, turning his head to look over his shoulder.

"Oh, hello Kall-Su." The Prophet smiled at him.

He didn't hesitate in mouthing the words of a spell. Summoned a force of energy that made the air waver and cast it towards the nave. It rebounded off a shield and crashed against the walls. And a strange thing happened. Instead of crumbling from the impact they seemed to absorb it. They shimmered and pulsed while the energies of Kall's spell raced along the lines of mortar and stone, desperately looking for a path out and not finding it. The wards had come into play. They protected these walls against magic.

"Wicked, foul thing to desecrate a chapel dedicated to the one god." The Prophet clicked his tongue reproachfully, rising to his feet with an audible creaking of the knees. "Mortal bodies just don't last as long as they ought." He remarked and Kall blinked, caught off guard at the casual observation. The Prophet opened his mouth and a blinding ball of white energy burst forth from between his lips, growing as it sped down the aisle towards Kall. He threw up a hasty shield, which would have deflected it save for the fact that where shield touched floor, the ward ate at its fabric, dispersing the lower section of it. Energy got through, stabbing its fingers upwards and enveloping him, finding all the weak spots where the wounds had been and gouging newly healed flesh. He cried out and fought it off, breathless and staggering.

He tried to summon an elemental and felt it stirring at his request, but it hesitated, repelled by the wards that guarded this place. It wanted to come to his bidding, but could not convince itself to pass the wards. He cursed it for a sniveling coward and called forth an ice spell to crystallize the air surrounding the Prophet. The air wasn't warded and it was humid enough to give him all the fuel he needed to create a weapon.

Ice formed at the Prophet's feet. The man looked down with mild surprise as it raced up his body, encasing him in a sheath of white ice. It thickened, layer upon layer until it was no longer recognizable as a man. Then the cracks began. A spiderweb network of cracks that started at its heart and worked their way out. Like the shattering of glass it began to chip away, littering the floor with shards. It exploded outwards in a final thrust of rebellion and Kall had to put up a shield again to avoid being impaled by ice of his own making.

Angelo stood there, smiling benevolently. "Do you understand how irreverent this is? Can you grasp that concept, being what you are, an aberration spawned of an unholy coupling?"

"Shut up." Kall cried out the words of a spell and released it in a single breath. It consumed the Prophet, swirled around him, its excess energies absorbed by the wards on the walls. This time when it cleared, the Prophet had his back to the alter, his shoulders haunched. A little trickle of blood ran down the corner of his mouth. The bloodied lips turned up to regain the smile. Kall wanted to scream. He wanted out of here.

"Don't speak to me of irreverence, you murderer." Kall spat at him.

"Oh, you can't begin to imagine." The Prophet summoned a spell. Kall braced for a powerful strike and got the opposite. A corpse lay at his feet. He looked down in shock and took a hasty step backwards. Bloody and ravaged, as if it had been blown apart by some terrible spell. A woman's body. Long, blood soaked hair tangled about a face that was no longer recognizable. But there was something about her that struck a chord. Something that made him catch his breath and choke on the bile that rose up his throat. He had seen this before. He had seen this ravaged body before. So long ago it was shrouded in the cobwebs of his memory, pushed away into a place where he might always treasure the guilt and yet not have to relive it day after day. He knew that body, because he had wrought the damage himself. A hundred years ago, locked in a shrine where they had sent his own mother to kill him.

He put a hand to his mouth, stifling a cry. It wasn't real. He told himself that. He knew better than to even believe it for a second, but he couldn't look away all the same.

An high impact energy spell hit him full center. He didn't even notice it coming. It blew him back into the wall with enough force to shatter bone. He slid down, mostly conscious, more interested in searching the floor for that terrifying corpse than pinpointing Angelo's location. It was gone. Melted away like the illusion it had been.

Angelo knelt at his side and the tall, ominous figure of Sinakha loomed behind him. The Prophet held something in his hand. A thin glass tube with a needle on the end. He plunged it into Kall's shoulder. He hardly felt it through the shock of the spell.

"A little something to make this easier on all of us. Wizardbane, they call it now. It used to have another name. I find it rather useful. You realize now, who's the master of this place, don't you? I had to let you find out for yourself, otherwise you'd have tested my limits." The prophet ran the back of his hand down Kall's cheek. "You understand now, don't you?"

The world was beginning to go soft around the edges. He was finding it increasingly difficult to focus on what Angelo was saying. His concentration began to scatter. He wanted to summon the magic and blast Angelo away from him, but he couldn't remember the words and the magic swirled aimlessly about, unchecked and ungovernable with his wits so shredded.

"Its all right." The Prophet promised. "You will."

It took three tries for Arshes' voice to get through the self-induced trance. Schneider blinked, pulling back from a mental search of the eather so intense it had his head swimming. It took a moment for his eyes to focus on the dark elf's face. Her eyes were worried, ears canted low in her agitation.

"Anything?"

Slowly he shook his head, running fingers through his hair in weariness. Not a thing. He'd been searching the ethereal plane for what seemed hours on end for some tiny trace of a presence that should have been clear as day to him and come up stumped and empty handed. Nothing. No single trace to hint that Kall-Su was even alive. But he knew he was. He was too valuable a commodity to a man who stole magic and form to keep himself alive and in power. It was a scary thought -- Angelino with Kall's power combined with his own. Separately either one was a force to reckon with --- one did not wish to dwell on what might happen if Angelo did succeed. One did not wish to contemplate what would happen to Kall's soul if he did. The logistics of the Prophet's pastime of body snatching were not perfectly clear to Schneider. One assumed the original owners of those stolen bodies were not allowed due consideration from the thief. One assumed there was a great deal of discomfort, mental or physical or both, involved. He did not wish that on Kall-Su. He arduously wanted to circumvent it.

"We're getting ready to leave." Arshes said. She looked tired. Her face was drawn. She held concern over Gara who was still weak, but gaining ground swiftly. She held concern over Kall-Su, though she might be loath to admit it, the rivalry between them a thing that had always curbed any show of affection. But, though one might quarrel with a brother, one would not wish great harm upon him.

Kiro still had men out in the mountains. Kiro would keep men out until the storms blew them back to the safety of the lowlands. There might be men of Angelo's out there still, Schneider did not contest that, but he was convinced that the Prophet himself was long gone. Let Kiro search if he liked. It soothed the man's feelings of helplessness to be doing something. Schneider knew better than to waste his time freezing up in the mountains. He could conduct his own hunt better from the comforts of Sta-Veron. Where all that was his was under one roof and he could better protect them.

They were chanting mantras against evil. He knew the words like they were written inside of his eyelids. He knew all the religious songs designed to protect man against the darkness. He never listened to them anymore -- ignored their presence in the world, but could not block out the monotonous singing of the dull eyed acolytes who shifted like shadows through the halls of this monstrous place. A place warded from the inside and not the out. Warded to keep things in, but not to repel.

"You're contaminated." The Prophet had said, so close that he felt the man's hot breath on his face. "We can cleanse the body of the filth of evil, but the soul is another matter. Purify him so that he does not offend the eyes of the One God."

Sinakha had wrapped thick fingers about his arm and jerked him up. The wizardbane had him reeling so badly he couldn't stand without the hurtful grip. Concentrate. Try and gather scattered thoughts so he might cast a spell. But every time he thought he had a grip on his wits, they would spin out of control and he would find himself dully responding to the impetus of Sinakha's grip on his arm. Turn right. Turn left. Climb steps. Stop.

Time slipped away from him. He did not recall entering the room with the incense and the chanting acolytes and the walls adorned with symbols of diocese protection. Sinakha thrust him into their midst, hovering a handbreadth behind and they circled him, shaking tiny bells to drive away demons and waving sticks of incense in the air. The smell made him nauseous. The room wavered around him. Without the support of Sinakha's hand, his knees threatened to give way.

He didn't want to kneel among them, while they chanted protections against evil aimed at him. But there was little help for it. One knee buckled and he went down, a hand on the floor, staring at the circling feet around him. Even with the wizardbane debilitating his wits, his pride still screamed protest at the situation.

They laid hands on him. Gentle enough not to alarm him. Just pulled him to his feet and drew him towards the back of the room where the air grew moist and warm. There was a baptismal pool there, under the symbol of the One God. It smelled of lavender and incense. He balked, realizing what they wanted to do. Fingers pulled at his bloody tunic and he panicked, not caring what magic he summoned or whether he could control it in his present state of mind. He willed the power desperately and felt it stirring erratically and wildly in the eather around him. It howled with abandon, almost as if it were a living thing that sensed that the hand that had always controlled it was beyond that mastery now. He released it, no actual spell, the words of one wouldn't gather in his head, intending to blast the priests away from him. But it went astray, whirling like a dervish about the room, putting out torches and shattering scones of incense, rebounding off the warded walls. A priest not even near him got hit by the residue fringe of it and screamed as half his shoulder and arm were torn from his body. The others cringed, loath to hold on to him, afraid to let go.

Then Sinakha was upon him. Spinning him around and backhanding him with enough force to send him to the floor at the edge of the pool. Again and his senses threatened to depart entirely. There was no resistance in his limbs when Sinakha dragged him into the water and plunged his head under the surface. Held him there until he was half drowned, sucking water into his lungs, then drew him up, coughing and choking on the water he'd swallowed.

Sinakha didn't say a word. Just drew him up and stared meaningfully into his eyes. A very clear warning. Then he was thrust back into the arms of the acolytes as the big man sloshed out of the pool. Everything turned gray about the edges. The world went away.

And came back in the same room he'd woken up in the first time. His senses were no clearer than they had been when he'd passed out. So he lay there miserably trying to organize thoughts that willfully refused to be subjugated.

He was in clean, white linen clothing. Loose, draw-string trousers and beltless tunic. His hair was dry, which meant some time had passed. He slipped out of bed and lost balance, going to one knee at the edge of the cot. He leaned there a moment, head in his hands trying to gather his equilibrium. It was like he was perpetually at the edge of sleep, hazy and sluggish of mind and body. He made a little sound of frustration and pushed himself up. One, two, three deep breaths to gather focus.

He went towards the door and found it unlocked again. Unsettling that they didn't try and lock him in. It worried him more than such a trivial thing should have. Same hall outside. He knew what lay in the one direction, so he took the other. Somewhere there had to be a way out. A door, a window where the wards were not so dense. Long hall way with doors -- some locked and some opening into empty rooms, as bare as his own -- none with windows. There was an intersection. He chose to go forward, half leaning against the wall because it was easier to walk that way with that solidity to help his balance.

A slender figure shifted out of the shadows of one fork of the intersection. He caught the movement with the corner of his eye. Glanced back and it retreated back into the darkness. He could not be certain he'd even seen it, his own mind was so untrustworthy at the moment. It did not come back out, so it either never existed or had fled. He began to continue on.

"Wait." A timid voice echoed along the stone passage. He turned, pressing his shoulders against the wall, staring into the shadows. A girl half stepped out from them, using them to hide her face. "You don't want to go down there. It's not allowed."

He blinked at her slowly. Her face was hardly visible past a straight fall of dark hair. She kept her head lowered, as if in deference. He tried to shake the clutter from his mind, thinking that if it was not allowed, then perhaps it meant down this passage was a way out. He started to move forward.

"You'll get into trouble." She warned, sounding almost disappointed.

As if he were not already so deeply in it, it threatened to drown him.

"Is there a door?" he asked and his voice sounded strange in his own ears. He had to stop and listen to it to ascertain it was his own. "A way out?"

"There are no doors. No windows. Just walls." She replied. Lost, disconsolate voice. "But that way -- that way leads to Below and the Master forbids any to go there."

There was the sound of footsteps, the tap tap of a cane on the stone. The girl gasped and shied back into the shadows. Kall stood his ground. The Prophet strolled down the dark corridor, a carved staff with the symbol of the One God in his hand. He never faltered in his step, as if he were not at all surprised to see Kall-Su there.

"Awake again, I see. And treading where you should not."

Kall glared, trying to gain enough composure not to make a fool of himself.

"You are insane if you think to keep me here."

"You killed a man of mine last night. You don't yet grasp your position here."

Last night? Had it been that long? "What do you hope to gain by this?" he hissed. Angelo merely smiled at him.

And something tried to crawl inside his head. Kall's eyes widened and reflexively he repelled it. It didn't require concentration or reason, it was mere natural habit to expel intrusion into the recesses of his mind. He saw the Prophet's frown of dissatisfaction, then a sharp stab of agony burned in his chest. He gasped, short of breath, clutching at the wall as the molten pain followed the pathways of his arteries into his body. Fire burning through his veins. Incinerating him from the inside out. The end of the staff hit him between the shoulders, a solid thump that drove him to the floor.

"Don't fight me." Angelo said, standing over him, the foot of the staff by his head. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to drive off the hurt, but it was insistent and insidious in its crafting and he in no shape to latch onto it and drag it away from him. "You killed a righteous man. Don't you think you deserve punishment? Don't you think you should beg forgiveness of the God?"

If he'd had the breath, he would have cursed the Prophet. The staff smacked into him again, like a hammer striking his flesh. A rib cracked. He heard it snap. That mundane pain was nothing to the lava that cursed through his veins.

Crack. It glanced off his skull, tearing the skin behind his ear. Blood trickled down his cheek, running into his mouth. Behind the darkness of his lids he saw lightening quick flashes another face twisted with rage, demanding penitence. An old man with a raised cane cursing him for ever being born.

"No." He cried, and raised an arm to block another blow. The oaken staff bounced off his arm, making the limb numb with shock. Angelo laughed, catching his wrist and pulling him half way up by it, pushing him against the wall and whispering. "You know how to ask for absolution, don't you? You have to try so much harder to gain His heed, being the spawn of a demon, than a righteous man would -- and sometimes he still won't listen, will he?"

The pain wouldn't stop. He didn't know it was blood or tears running down his face. He would have preferred to have just passed out and escaped it that way.

"You can stop it." Angelo whispered, a fey, taunting voice that got past the thrumming white noise of pain in his head. "Just a few simple words."

A few simple words? What had placated that other fanatic so long ago? What had he said over and over, time after time to make the old man stop railing and accusing him of things he never had been certain he'd been responsible for? Nothing for long, but if he sounded like he truly meant it he might stave off the the brunt of the anger. Just a few words to stop the pain. Nothing so monumental as a surrender. He was not stupid enough to suffer needlessly out of misplaced pride.

"I'm sorry." A whisper. He barely heard it himself. "Forgive me."

"Oh, yes." Angelo brushed his hair back, a caress almost. And the pain faded away, a tangible memory that left Kall shaking. "You are so much more reasonable than he was."

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   [1]: aftermath41.htm



	41. Chapter 41

aftermath41

Forty-one

It was a dream he didn't want to be in. From the moment he looked down and saw his sandaled feet on the dusty dirt road outside the little village he wanted desperately out of it because dreams of the place he had been born always turned into nightmares. He couldn't stop his legs from carrying him forward down that road that ran alongside the river. The docks were behind him, the smell of fish strong in the air. The grass was green and tall along the shore and the trees on the other side dense and full of spring growth. The little fishing village was ahead. He could see the first of houses now and the outlying gardens tended by the women in the village.

He did not want to go into that village, but the dream seemed determined to push him there. A woman was on her knees weeding one of the gardens. She glanced up at his passing and narrowed her eyes, making a small sign against evil with her dirt smeared hand. He looked at the ground beneath his sandals and passed her by. His feet were small and filthy. He could not recall where he'd been playing. Had he been playing? The edges of the dream fuzzed with reality.

There were people in the streets about their daily business. Faces that blurred before his eyes, half remembered. They all seemed so much taller than he. Some of them looked down at him in distaste. They scorned him. They whispered about him behind their hands and sometimes with not even that veil to hide their words. All the buildings were indistinct save two. The small house where he and his mother and lived with grandfather and the larger church that sat at the end of the street. His house lay not far from the church, Grandfather being a priest and living close to his calling. The cemetery lay between them. He could see all the gravestones from his window. At nighttime he could sometimes imagine things moving among them. Shades of the dead. He had mentioned that fear once to Grandfather and the old man's eyes had bulged and he'd started ranting and raving about second sight passed on by the hellspawn that had sired him. At the time Kall hadn't known exactly what he'd meant. At the time all he could do was cower under the old man's wraith. He'd had to say penance's for a week after that, in efforts to wash away the evil. Grandfather never had been satisfied.

He was almost home. There was a covered basket in his hands that he hadn't realized was there. Fish from the docks. A rock hit him in the leg. He yelped and whirled about. One of the older town boys who always bullied him stood jeering at him, hands on hips.

"Bringing fishheads to the town whore?" the ruffian sneered. They always called mother names. She always pretended not to hear. It made Kall so made he almost dropped the basket. He wanted to pick up the rock and hurl it back, but the boy was bigger than he and had bested him before in a fight. Besides, grandfather would only blame him and he'd have to do penance's.

"Don't call her that." He said tightly.

The bully laughed. "Make me stop. Bastard. Fatherless cur."

Kall ground his teeth. They called him names all the time too. The children only echoing what they overheard their parents saying. He stiffened his back in helpless anger and turned to go down the path to his house -- and another of the bully boys stood blocking that path, grinning. A stick in his hand. On this long spring day they had nothing better to do than torment him. He didn't want to get into a fight. He didn't want to loose the fish. He darted down the road past the cemetery and towards the church. The bullies ran after him, calling him names. He ran up the steps to the plain wooden doors. There were two stained glass windows next to the doors, the pride and joy of Grandfather's congregation. They had come all the way from Judas. The bully boys pitched rocks at him and one of them crashed through the right hand panel. The boys froze in sudden horror at what they'd done, then scattered like rabbits.

Kall stared at the widening crack in stupefaction. The doors were yanked open behind him. Grandfather stormed out, waving his cane like a weapon, thready beard waving in the breeze of his passage. Small, black eyes alight with fury.

"What? You did this?!!"

"No!" Kall protested in shock even as the old man snatched him by the ear and yanked him inside the shadow of the vestibule, throwing him down to his knees to better see the pieces of shattered glass that lay on the wooden floor. The basket of fish went tumbling.

"What demon spirit made you do this?" The old man cried, grabbing him up again by the collar, shaking him so hard his head snapped back and forth on his neck.

"But I didn't --"

"And you lie in a house of god to compound the crime?" Grandfather's hand snapped out and slapped him. "Hell spawn. Evil, evil hell spawn. Gods save us from your mischief."

"But it wasn't me." He was sobbing, lost and half convinced that Grandfather was right. That somehow it had been his fault. That he'd made those boys throw the stones.

Grandfather shoved him against the wall in a fury and the cane lashed his back. Retribution for something he hadn't even done. It hurt. It hurt so bad he shredded his lip and then he did something in reflexive urge to protect himself. He summoned an ice spirit. Spoke the words through the blood in his mouth and set it on the old man. It formed out of the air, a snarling ice beast that leapt onto the frail old priest and bowled him over, ripping his throat out in a single tear, then it turned its glassy, white eyes back to him, stared for a moment and bounded away. Kall pressed against the wall, biting his knuckle staring at the bloodied corpse. Another priest came out of the Abby, bent by Grandfather to see what wounds he had taken, then looked up at Kall with hard, incriminating eyes.

"Look what you've done, boy." He didn't know this priest and yet he did.

"I sorry." Kall sobbed. "I didn't mean it. I'm sorry."

Grandfather opened his eyes and lifted his head to look at him, throat bloodied and raw. "I should have drowned you at birth. You don't deserve to live. You'll be the death of us all."

"It's time to take your penance." The other priest said.

No. No. He came awake with a start, scrambled up and back against the wall while his mind tried to sort reality from dream. Dark room. Dank, moist air with the smell of age and mildew. He knew the room. Not an escape from the nightmare, merely a plunge into another all too real one.

A shadow moved against the wall by the door. The door was half open. At first he thought it might have been Angelo, but the furtive movements relayed that it wasn't. The Prophet would never be so circumspect in his presence. He was too shaken from the dream to speak, so he just stared. The figure paused in its escape -- crouched for a moment by the door, then straightened and turned. It was the girl with the hair that hid her face. She stood with her hand on the door, then seemed to make a decision and took a step back into the cell.

"You can't fight the master. It's lunacy. Resist and you make it harder on yourself."

"You have no idea what you're talking about." He whispered. His back hurt from the caning -- no, that had been the dream -- from Angelo's staff, then.

"Don't I?" she whispered back and was gone. He didn't have the will to call her back. Didn't have the excess mental energy to wonder who she was. He pulled his knees up, folding his arms around them and stretching his back to work out the kinks. His side ached terribly. He remembered the rib and tried a healing. But healing required concentration at the best of times and his was gone thanks to the wizardbane. How long it lasted he didn't know. Angelo most certainly did, down to the minute. Angelo was a devil.

They reached the snowy city after four days of travel. The castle was abuzz with the return until word got around - spread by the weary guards who accompanied them - of the losses they had taken. Their lord among them. Then silence reigned. All the maids walked around ashen faced and quiet, the castle guard fumed in the barracks. Yoko was the only one who didn't seem phased. Yoko was firmly planted in her own little world of blind happiness. She smiled at them all when they came in out of the cold, refusing to acknowledge the dour news they carried. Refusing to see anything that contradicted her desperate illusion.

It hit Schneider so hard, seeing her thus that he stared morosely into the fire while the rest of them discussed what had happened and what they might do about it. Gara was still weak and shaky, but he wouldn't go up to his bed, despite Arshes' urging. He didn't know how to take that sudden concern. He couldn't quite bring himself to meet her eyes after a confession he thought he was making on his dying breath. Damn Murasume blade and its predilection for keeping him alive when by all rights he should be dead. Arshes was having trouble meeting his glance which made matters worse by far. Gara had never been a man easily embarrassed but he wished at that moment to sink into the floor and escape. He should have gone up to bed, but there was danger and action that might not be wise brewing in Schneider's eyes.

Schneider had never been one to sit idly by when things needed doing. There was some hint of madness over the insults done him by the assaults on his friends. No one had ever dared to offend him so in the past. No one had ever managed to hit him so hard and in such a personal nature. It was worse than any attack on his person. He could have overcome that sort of strike. He couldn't fight this because Angelo struck where he wasn't. Angelo did his damage and ran, leaving bloody taunts behind him. It was driving Schneider crazy.

The sorcerer's gaze finally regained its focus. He tore his eyes away from the fire and Yoko and stalked towards the doors. Gara sighed, figuring nothing good was afoot. Figuring that he owed Schneider at least a moments worth of level headed good sense. It would serve them all in the long run. He pushed his aching body out of the chair, pretending ignorance of Arshes' worried look, and followed Schneider out the doors and into the moonlight courtyard. Not the quiet courtyard of weeks ago, but one even in night filled with supplies and accruements of war.

"Where are you going?"

Schneider tossed a dark glare over his shoulder. "Don't start with me, Gara. I'm in no mood."

"That I can see. You also have the look a man soon to fly the coop. Planning on taking off on your own to search Angelo down?"

"I can do it better than the lot of Kall's men."

"Maybe. Probably won't do any good. Angelo's not sloppy. He hasn't gotten this far leaving loose ends or clues. He's also pulling your strings like a master puppeteer. When did he figure out how to work you so good? When you were his prisoner in Meta-Rikan?"

The blue eyes narrowed. "He has no power over me."

"Maybe. Maybe not. What if you go off in a fit looking for him and he attacks here? I don't think Arshes and I can take him. Think about it. He hurts Yoko to draw us out. Separates us. Attacks us and draws you there and while we're all occupied he takes Kall. Bam. Bam. Bam." Gara hit his open palm with his fist. "He's got it all orchestrated. He's been controlling this game and we've all been playing to his tune. He wants you angry and not thinking rationally because that's the only way he can get to you."

Schneider looked away, expelling a breath of frustration. The look a man who knew a thing to be true, but still did not want to accept it, on his face.

Gara rubbed at his neck, wearily. "He's had a long time to figure out the best way to play people. He's been around as long as you, right? Only you never were good at the mind game. He seems to excel at it."

"Do you know how he's survived all these years?" Schneider hissed. "He's a mortal man. He should have died centuries ago. He's a body thief, Gara. He gains his magic by stealing it from others. What do you think he wanted me for? What do you think he took Kall for? He told me he was going to do this. He fucking told me! And I shrugged it off. Do you understand? Think about what happens if he breaks Kall and gains his power?" He glared at Gara. Gara thought about it and did not like the conclusions he made.

"And you want me to just sit around here waiting for the spring thaw?"

"No." Quietly, calmly. "I want you to stop and reason. I want you to use your damned sorcery to track Kall from here -- which is as good a place as any. It's a big damned continent, he could be anywhere. I want us all to go into this thing on our terms not his. I want you to wait till we've got a lead to go on. Kiro's combing the mountains. I'm sending my men south. Don't go running around like a chicken with its head cut off."

Schneider glared. "I -- do not ever run around like a chicken with its head cut off."

"Just a turn of the phrase."

From the look on Schneider's face, the absolute stubbornness, Gara thought he was going to ignore him and go off and do what he wanted anyway. He swayed a little, weak from the hard travel, a little dizzy from the intensity of this talk, from the foreboding predictions Schneider made. The wizard waved a hand at him, cursing under his breath.

"Go to bed, Gara, before you fall down. I'm not picking you up again."

"I didn't ask you to. Thanks for doing it the first time, anyway."

"It wasn't the first."

"Probably won't be the last." Gara muttered darkly.

"Go on. And stop looking like that. I'm not going. Satisfied?" His eyes glittered beneath black lashes. He crossed his arms, looking torn and frustrated. Gara thought it was only partly revenge that had him itching to find Angelo so bad. There existed a fear for Kall-Su that had nothing to do with Angelo pilfering his magic and using it against them.

It took Kall-Su a good while to step foot outside his cell again. Hunger and thirst were persistent supplicants at the back of his awareness. The refusal to accept this warped and malignant imprisonment were more insistent draws on his attention. Even then he lost time -- just blanked out in the middle of a train of thought and came back to himself with the incoherent suspicion that he had sat a long time just staring at the dark stones that made up the walls of the cell. At least he didn't dream during those times. And if he did, he didn't recall the details. He couldn't shake the memory of the last one. It clung like smoke to his skin and try as he might, he couldn't rub it off. Just like the bruises that he couldn't heal, even though he sat with his eyes closed and tried his hardest to direct the currents of a healing magic. He just couldn't formulate the thought patterns it took to control it. Which made him think about Yoko, who'd always been so good at healing. She had the touch of an angel. Which made him think about what the Prophet had done to her, reminding him of his own fault in the matter. Schneider was angry at him. The Prophet had surely taken him to get at Schneider. As if he mattered enough to make a difference. As if Schneider wasn't angry enough at him to give a damn.

Guilt. Guilt. Guilt. It always came down to guilt. He could not wash the guilt from his dreams. And Angelo was using it. _ He knew _ Angelo was using it and it didn't matter in the least, that knowledge, because he could not escape the persecution that he had always inflicted upon himself. Could not escape the fact that the only person who had ever really loved him had in the end died because of him, cursing his birth on her last breath.

If he sat there in the darkness thinking a moment longer, with the wizardbane creating endless loops in his memory, he would go crazy. He left the cell again. This time more wary, standing against the wall outside for a long time trying to figure which way to go. Where had the girl gone? She was an enigma in this place. Not an acolyte. Not a guard most certainly. She had warned him twice. He had ignored her twice. The advice of a mere girl meant nothing to the high lord of ice. But then he was far from that at the moment, and she seemed to know this foul place better than he.

He chose the path leading away from the temple. Turned at the intersection this time, deciding to take the advice on not venturing down the path that led to Below. Whatever that was. It sounded ominous enough to make him wish to avoid it. The halls were like a maze. There were stairs leading up and down. The place was monstrous. And not once did he see a single ray of light shining in from outside. In truth there seemed to be no windows. It chilled him - to whom cold meant nothing - to the bone, that cessation of natural light. It brought to mind the underground, cavernous place where Ansasla had rested, dormant in form, but insidiously active of mind.

He pulled his thoughts away from that humiliation. Yet one more thing to feel guilt about -- his weakness in that whole abominable situation.

He passed a pair of acolytes in the hall -- the first living souls he'd seen on this latest foray of exploration. They walked past him without doing more than surreptitiously casting glances his way. If they spoke to themselves once past, his hearing could not pick it up. He stared at their backs as they retreated. There was death in their eyes. Living, breathing death. Life without hope. Without meaning. There was nothing left for them to speak about. He leaned against the wall, a wave of despondency creeping over him. It was the place that drained the life from a body. The place and the whim of its twisted master. If there was a window it would have been better. But perhaps it had been designed that way apurpose.

Lily watched him because he didn't belong here. Because no one else had ever been brought here after she came and she was curious. Because he was beautiful and his eyes were bruised and lost. But mostly she watched him because he spoke to her and no one else in this place without windows had ever done that, save the master and the sound of _his_ voice made her cringe inside.

It was easy to go unseen in this place, unless the master were expressly looking for you. Then he always knew where a body was. There were so many nooks and shadowed crannies, so many unused rooms to hide in so large a place that she could have avoided all the other living souls here for eternity in an endless game of hide and seek. But, what was the point? Why hide if she were already a slave?

But she did hide from him. For the same reason she watched him. Because he had spoken to her and she did not know how to deal with that after so long a time without it. She was desperate to know what manner of man the master held so much interest in. She was desperate to know whether he was merely another initiate into the monastery that was the place without windows, or if he were something more. More she thought. Because the Master had never shown such a fervent interest in anything before save his musings of vengeance. She wondered if this were an enemy. She hoped not, for she had seen what the Master did to his own people at small infractions. She would hate to see her beautiful, sad eyed angel be destroyed by the Master. But she feared it would happen anyway. He rebelled. He had not yet learned that capitulation was the way to less pain and in the end, less humiliation. She had tried to tell him. Free men never understood. It took a lifetime of slavery to learn those harsh lessons.

She hid in a open doorway while two acolytes passed, waited for a moment then peeked out. He leaned against the wall, looking miserable. He looked down the hall in her direction, at the backs of the acolytes. They and all their ilk would be heading towards the dining hall for the second and last meal of the day. She ought to be heading there herself, her stomach rumbled insistently. Stragglers got nothing. She wondered of a sudden if he had eaten anything since he was brought here. Two days. She had not seen him in the dining hall and food was not allowed outside it.

While she was debating, gathering her courage to perhaps step out into the dim light and speak to him -- steps echoed down the hall. Not the quiet, hesitant tread of the acolytes, but the confident step of a man who knows power. Not the Master's rhythm - she knew that too well. It was the step of his Shadow. She slipped further into the shadow of the doorway, crouching down to make a smaller shape in the darkness. Sinakha passed her by without pause, intent on other prey.

He came out of the shadows like a wolf on the hunt. The odd green of his eyes glowed within the flat planed specter of his face. For a moment, he was a ghostly, militant apparition and Kall-Su stared with the drunken fascination of a dreamer only recently arrived in reality. It was not until Sinakha put hands on him that his mind cleared enough to realize it was nothing more than Angelo's captain and indignation fought its way past the wizardbane at the treatment.

"Take your hands from me." He hissed, trying to dislodge the fingers that bit into his arm, drawing him down the hall as if he were a truant child. And Sinakha merely ignored him, as if he were no more consequential than a child. Humiliation upon humiliation upon humiliation. For so long he had lived with all respect afforded a warlord, a lord, a wizard of the highest echelon that the lack of it continually dumfounded him.

To struggle against the man's dogged determination was useless and only added to the shame, so he walked along, grinding his teeth until the sound of many voices raised in prayer alerted him that they were approaching some gathering place. The smell of food drifted down the passage. It made him recall how long it had been since he'd eaten. Not since the morning Angelo had ambushed him. How long ago was that? He found he had no clear notion.

A chamber lit my torches along the walls. Long, low ceilinged, lined with two plain wooden tables and at the end with the ever present alter and symbol of the high god. Kettles of soup or stew sat at the end of each table, along with baskets of bread and urns of water. Row upon row of robed acolytes knelt on the stone floor before the alter, perhaps thirty or forty of them in total, reciting prayers of thanksgiving. Altered prayers. Not quite the words he remembered from childhood. But the prayers then had been to the brethren of gods the village worshipped, not merely to the one god.

The sonorous rhythm of the chant was monotonous and echoed in the chamber. The bowed heads, the clasped hands, the fervent, desperate tremor in dozens of voices to be heard by the deaf ears of their god. As if they thought it were from his hand indeed that the bread came from.

The Prophet sat at the end of one of the tables in the only high backed chair that graced the room. In his hands he turned the symbol he wore about his neck. He did not turn his head to look when Sinakha led him into the room, though he was certain to have seen them from his vantage. He waited until his captain had marched Kall over they stood beside his chair before he deigned to look up. He smiled. Kall hated his smile. Detested it with a passion that made his fingers curl.

"Will you break bread with us, Kall-Su?" Angelo asked, as if Kall were a guest in this place. As if he had other choices available to him. He looked away, not answering, trying to ignore the hunger that the smells of food awakened. Sinakha's fingers tightened on his arm and he got a short, rough jerk to remind him of his manners.

"Ah, no need to be unreasonable." Angelo purred. "No need to deny yourself out of mere pride."

Pride. He had already assessed that pride was not worth a good many things. His first lesson one in this horrid place. "All right." A whisper of agreement.

"Kneel then before the alter of the high god and give prayers of thanksgiving for His generosity."

Kall half laughed, then decided the suggestion was too wretched for even satiric humor and hissed instead. "Go to hell."

The Prophet didn't even move and something lashed across Kall's face. It felt like tail end of a cat of nine tails. He stifled a cry and lifted his free hand to touch his face. It felt as if half the flesh had been torn off, but when he fingered it, he was whole. The acolytes never stopped their prayers. The Prophet turned the symbol around and around in his fingers.

"If you will not give thanks to the god you will not eat. It is the way of the righteous."

"But I'm not righteous, am I?" Kall said softly. "I thought you knew that."

"Oh, but I strive to correct that. I may fail. You may be beyond redemption. But one must try." His eyes gleamed. He waved a hand and Sinakha pushed Kall towards the bench next to Angelo's chair. Forced him down upon it when he stared at it stupidly. He sat there, staring at the rough table top, listening to the chanting, trying to block it out. It invaded his mind like a persistent tune. Over and over, deep voiced and repetitious.

_Forgive us our sins, oh divine holy father. _

_Sustain our unworthy bodies with the food from your vine. _

_Hear our pledge for eternal faithfulness and protect our souls from_

_the reach of the dark pit. _

_Humbleness is our virtue. _

And on and on it went. All forty lines of the prayer of thanksgiving. Repeated and repeated. A higher voice joined the chorus of male tones. Kall glanced up under his lashes to see that the girl had slid into the hall and knelt at the back of the row of acolytes, to add her voice to the supplication.

They ceased after a while, but the echoes still rebounded within his head. Stew was served and they all silently took their places at the benches, bent over their meals as if it were the most interesting point of their existence. It probably was. Sinakha stood behind Kall as though waiting for some infraction he might discipline. Someone brought the Prophet a glass of wine for him to sip while his flock ate their meals. One imagined he dined on better fare than what was served here. Not stew, bread or water was offered Kall.

Trivial, trivial punishment. He refused to let it get to him. Refused to let anger rise, but he could not keep down the resentment. The frustration that he was reduced to this.

"Do you wonder why they haven't come looking for you?" Angelo's voice wormed its way into his mind. He blinked, not quite certain he heard it with his ears. "Its been days. I must admit to surprise myself not to have Dark Schneider tearing down my doorstep. I had prepared, you know -- but he's not come. He's usually more protective of those he considers his own. Did you have a falling out?"

Kall tightened his lips, concentrating on the grains of the wood. Block out the voice even though it wormed its way into his thoughts. Ignore him, even though he spoke more truth than he could possibly know.

"I visited the Thunder Empress before I came to you." The Prophet informed him and he did look up at that, remembering the bursts of magic he had felt and chosen not to investigate. "She and the Ninja Master put up a good fight. I don't honestly know if they managed to survive it. I do know that he went to her though. He was desperate to get to her. But wasn't that always how it was between you? Didn't he always forsake you for her?"

He clenched his fists, trying to do anything to block out the insidious voice in his head. Recite the prayer in his mind. He knew the lines by heart. Grandfather had drilled them into him, one more obstacle against the darkness that tainted his soul. The first in a line of priests to defame him for evil, before he ever truly knew what evil was.

He couldn't get the insinuations out of his mind though. Not fully. Angelo spoke a portion of the truth. And if a portion were true --- how did he know what other parts were fabrications?

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath42.htm



	42. Chapter 42

aftermath42

Forty-two

Schneider rode the winds above Sta-Veron, frigid fingers of air tearing at his cloak and hair. The city was a maze of narrow streets and tiny, blocky buildings, the castle a larger block of gray far, far below. There were no clouds out today to obstruct his view of it, even from so high a distance. The sun glinted down, an insubstantial heat against the winds of high.

He ignored it all. His mind was far flung, his senses stretched like spider's silk in a far sensing that over the past days had stretched the width and breadth of a continent. He had begun with a broad sweep and turned up nothing. No hint. No tiny scrape of awareness either of Kall-Su, who he should have been able to discern or the bitingly familiar tang of the Prophet's power. Which meant there were wards. Wards were harder to get past when one's prey had the entirety of a continent to hide in. It was grueling, exhausting work, searching mile by mile of physical world, while underneath he scrutinized the ethereal one as well. He found a hundred essences he knew - out in the world -- a hundred familiar spirits that had touched him at one point or another in time - and none of them where the one he wanted.

_Damnit, Kall, help me._ He roared into that plane that was below consciousness and above the realm of sleep. Eight days and nothing. This was not Yoko, who was an infant in the ways of magic, or Gara who's presence was weak in the planes where magic dwelt, or even Arshes or was damned powerful but sometimes left herself open in her passion. Kall was damned well better than that. Kall shouldn't have let this happen.

It was driving him crazy. Eight days and he was so irritable and tired from the searching that the servants scurried from his path when they saw him coming. The castle guard went quiet and embarrassed when he was around. Gara and Arshes avoided him. The only person that was unfazed by his mood was Yoko, who paid him not the slightest heed most of the time and babbled incoherent delusions when she did. She hardly spoke to anyone anymore. She sat in her room for the most part, looking out the window or sewing by the fire. Keitlan would sit with her for hours on end. He was grateful for that loyalty. Someone needed to be with her, but he could not bring himself to watch her in her dementia for more than a short while. He missed her wit. He missed her scolding and her forthright opinions. He missed the optimism that she had always upheld, even in the worst situation. Though he might be loath to admit it, he wanted her opinion on what he should do. He wanted her advice because he was at his wits end himself. But mostly he just wanted the calming comfort of her smile and her laughter.

He touched down on the tower roof and stood there, eyes closed, trying to subdue the pounding behind his temples. It was not enough of a physical pain for a healing to banish. It was a strain on his magic that he had kept up almost non-stop for the last week. Not easy work, the delicate operation of finding a needle in a haystack.

Down the narrow tower stair. Past the servant's floor and down to the residential one. He hesitated in the hallway, bereft of objective. He was despondent and disillusioned and torn between the need to seek support and the desire to sulk in solitude. Arshes' room was down the hall, but she might not be there. She had taken to wondering the city in the company of her few remaining men. Gara might be all right to talk strategy with, but he was damned useless when Schneider was looking for a little comfort.

He drifted by Yoko's door. Leaned against the frame and watched her sitting in the windowseat, her knees pulled up to her chest, her eyes far away. She hummed to herself, so far away from him and the rest of the world that she might as well not be here at all. The light graced her profile and the stray strands of reddish hair; her skin so porcelain pale as to be almost a dolls. Her beauty made him ache. He dropped his gaze, rubbing a hand across his eyes.

"Rushie, are you all right?" Soft voice. Limpid eyes watched him when he snapped his gaze up to look at her. There was concern there and confusion.

"No." He admitted. "Are you?"

"Of course. Why wouldn't I be?" she went a little fuzzy eyed thinking about that. Everyone who dared council him told him not to confront her boldly with the truth. To let her reach it on her own. They warned that it might do more damage than good forcing the issue. He could not conceive how.

"What's happened?" she asked. It was more concern than she'd had for anyone outside of her illusional baby for more than a week. He stepped into the room, encouraged by the question.

"Angelo's got Kall and I can't find him. Don't you remember hearing that?"

Angelo's name made her expression go blank and she turned to stare out the window, blocking him out. Blocking everything out again. Schneider drew a ragged breath, overwrought with the search, with the failure that ate at him like a cancer and the frustration of having all the things he loved bruised and destroyed.

"Look at me!" he roared at her. She didn't flinch. He stalked across the room, grasped her sleight shoulders and turned her roughly to face him. Her knees slid off the window seat and she sat there, balanced on the edge, eyes boring into his chest. He grabbed her chin, forcing her face up.

"It's dead, Yoko. The baby is dead. Accept it." He slid his hand down to grasp her wrist and forced it between them, lying her hand upon her flat stomach. "Feel that? There's nothing living there now."

She turned her face away, her eyes growing just a little disturbed. She began humming again. A baby's lullaby. He thrust her away, trembling. What would it take to make her understand? Did he have to show her the grave and the frozen corpse?

Did he? He caught his breath, stunned at the inspiration. Then grasping hold of it like a holy tenant. He caught her arm, pulling her along in his wake, snatching her cloak from the peg behind the door as he forced her from the room. Like a reluctant child she balked, but was nothing against his strength and determination. Down to the main hall and people stopped in their tasks to stare. Yoko was whimpering, her eyes threatening tears. He didn't care. He kicked open the doors, got tired of fighting her outside on the steps, spun her around and in a deft motion wrapped her cloak about her, then swept her up, formed the words of a flight spell in his head and ascended into the sky. He heard the cries of people from below and ignored them. Focused on a southerly destination, one irrevocably etched into his memory. She stopped struggling. Just went limp in his arms, her face buried against his shoulder to shield it from the wind. He put up a buffer between them and the cold.

How many times had he traveled this route? With each trip only to find disaster. This time it would be different. He convinced himself of that. This time something good would come of it. She would be awakened to reality. She would mourn as was proper and return to being Yoko.

Hours and she never stirred. It was almost dark when he reached the terrible little gully where he had found her. He sat her on the ground and she stood, wrapped in her cloak, shifting from foot to foot, either from cold or from disorientation. He cast the whole of the area in a blaring witchlight, looking for the marker Kall's men had left on the little grave. He had not seen it himself, had not returned to this spot since he had first left it, but he had been told him what Kall's men had done. There. A pile of stones over a small mound of earth. He grabbed Yoko by the arm and pulled her over to it.

"Its here, Yoko. Buried in the cold earth. Look."

He hissed a word and the stones and earth erupted, blown away. The dirt spewed aside, creating a hole. Past the frost line and the earth turned rich and dark and the pit grew. Nothing was revealed inside it. His breath came harder. He felt a little disorientation himself. A little bewilderment at this riddle that had presented itself. He called upon a strike of lightning and it struck the earth with enough force to make the ground tremble and send Yoko off her feet. A pit yawned before him. A pit full of broken chunks of rock, of ice and snow, of shattered roots and veins of metal lying below the surface. But no bit of flesh was there.

This was the spot. There was no other. He stalked around the gully desperately looking to see if there might be some other pile of carefully placed rocks that he had overlooked. Some other mound of freshly dug earth. He called lightning to blast a half dozen holes in the earth and none of them revealed what he wanted. Yoko huddled in the midst of his destruction, silent observer. He collapsed on an overturned rock, stunned and only barely beginning to accept the notion that the infant corpse he'd had buried here was gone. That something had taken it. Not animals. The rocks would have been disturbed. What then? He pulled at his hair in frustration. He had come here to restore Yoko to her senses and he was close to loosing his own.

A light touch on his shoulder. "It will be okay, Rushie." She assured him. "When the baby's born, everything will be better. You'll see."

Time passed. Day and night were interchangeable in the Place Without Windows. The light never changed. Always flickering and taunting, turning into shadow and hiding the true details of the place. Sleep was a torture more excruciating than the waking humiliation of captivity. The nightmare's more vivid within the recesses of his mind where they fed off all his subconscious dread. He only half remembered most of them, and they were more devastating for it. Lingering scrapes of horror- pain- guilt - that he could not quite grasp the source of. But it stayed with him during the waking hours nonetheless and he sat in the shadows of his cell trying to dredge up the recollection so he might chase it away once and for all. But it never came.

The Prophet did. The Prophet hammered at him ruthlessly with ever-changing tactics. A mental assault that left him reeling and senseless; a fanatical sermon denouncing him for unclean and tainted, demanding retribution, demanding things Kall refused to give until the sermon turned into punishing pain that he could not block out and then he gave in a little. And bit by bit - as his mental defenses weakened from depravation and torment, and the self-destructive force of his own dreams - he crumbled.

He tried to deflect the mental intrusion, but it was so hard with his brain clouded by wizardbane. Angelo was hideously good at mind games. It was as violent and intrusive as any physical rape and left Kall as traumatized. It got worse as the Prophet discovered his weaknesses. And the nightmares began to bleed over into consciousness.

He began to think the Prophet was right. They hadn't come to get him, because they weren't looking. Schneider was angry because he'd killed Yoko's baby -- no, no, he hadn't -- Angelo had -- but he'd let her fall into the Prophet's hands. So Schneider left him here to have his mind ripped to shreds -- just like he'd abandoned him to that _other _ darkness that had claimed him. But this was worse because the Prophet did not want to elevate him to power, he wanted to destroy him utterly. And he did it in the name of God. And though Kall-Su had always avoided priests and holy houses with a vengeance, the belief drilled into him as a child by Grandfather still lingered. There were gods -- they just turned their faces from the unworthy. They turned their faces from him because of what he was -- what he had been born of.

_Do you think you're worthy to grace the halls of heaven? _ Grandfather said in the dream -- in reality so long ago.

_No. _ Kall replied, a little, timid answer. He thought it was the one Grandfather expected. He knelt on the hard wood floor of the church, small and dirty because he'd been fighting with one of the boys. He couldn't recall what had started it. Blood ran down from his nose. He'd gotten the worse of the fight, being smaller. Grandfather blamed him. Called him an instigator. Rapped him across the back of the legs with his cane until there were red welts and sat him down to beg the gods for forgiveness.

Tears ran down his face to mix with the blood, but he prayed, clasping his hands together so hard his nails bit into the backs of his hands.

_Your mother is to blame for this._ Grandfather said acidly. _She brought this upon us. Your sins are hers to bear._

He prayed all the more fervently, begging the gods that no blame of his be placed upon Mother. Mother loved him. She was the only one who cared what became of him. She was the only one who protected him against the worst of Grandfather's prosecutions. He wished she'd come now, gracing the church with her gentle presence. Bringing calm and forgiveness in the warm depths of her eyes. Smoothing things over with Grandfather as only she could. She would wipe the blood off his lip. She would hug him and make it better. She would tell him he did not endanger her immortal soul with his mere existence. But what if he did? What if every sin he committed condemned her to a deeper hell?

_Please, please God. Forgive me my trespass. Forgive the sins of my flesh. Forgive the sins of my mind. _

_The god will never turn his face towards the spawn of a demon._ The other priest had come to join Grandfather on the podium behind the naive, the both of them looking down at Kall disapprovingly. _The only thing that will save her soul, is his death. _

He shuddered, curled up against the wall and mouthed the words of the prayer over and over. The taste of salt was on his lips. Tears? Blood? From the fight? He could only barely recall the fight. He huddled in darkness, wondering where the light had gone. Where grandfather was. The church had been replaced by dank darkness and a tiny square cell with a rough stone alter against the far wall. He could not recall how he had gotten there. The words of the priest echoed in his mind. He did not wish to jeopardize Mother's soul. He fervently did not wish to endanger her in any way. But he didn't want to die. But, Grandfather said everything he did was a sin because of what he was. Because of what had spawned him. He didn't know how to stop being what he was.

He sobbed miserably and crawled over to the alter, knelt before it and prayed for forgiveness.

"Why can't you do that for the Master? Then he'll let you eat." The voice came out of the darkness at him. He gasped, choked back a cry and cringed back against the wall. A figure shifted in the shadows by the door. A girl's soft voice. She had been sitting there, watching him. He didn't know her.

He did know her.

He blinked, confused. His vision blurred and his balance did. He clutched at the alter and rested his head against its cold stone surface.

Reality smashed into him like a fist. On his knees before the alter, the words of a prayer on his lips, the fear of a child a clinging mist in his mind. He cried out in dismay at what he was doing -- of what his mind had thrust upon him. He glared at the shadow of the girl for witnessing it. He could not form words to chase her away.

"What will it hurt?" she asked. "Capitulate. Bend knee and give thanks before his god and he'll relent. You'll starve otherwise."

"I'll die first." He murmured, not so certain that was true anymore. From the small huff of air she released, he didn't think she thought so either.

"You'll suffer." She whispered. "Why are a few meaningless words so important? If you don't bend, you'll break."

"Why do you care? Who are you?"

She shook her head. Her hand moved slightly and caught at the faint light. There was a black tattoo there. A slave mark. He stared at it. He hadn't known what she was. He hadn't thought a slave. He couldn't imagine why the Prophet would need to buy a person, when he could take whatever he wanted. She self-consciously moved the hand back into shadow, and shifted as if to rise and flee.

"Who are you?" he repeated, the need to know suddenly overpowering the humiliation and the terror of the dream/reality.

"No one." She whispered and slipped out the door and down the hall. He couldn't find the strength to move or call after her.

"You're avoiding me."

Gara held up a hand and the ninja he was sparring with stepped back, unsheathed sword lowered. They stood in the practice yard, stripped down to nothing more than shirts and trousers and soft boots in the heat of exertion. One didn't notice the cold until one stopped. And even then, with Arshes Nei standing outside the fence, the warmth of embarrassment flooded up to chase away the chill of sweat drenched skin.

Gara wiped a hand across his brow. Nodded once to the ninja that the practice was over and sheathed his practice sword. The ninja walked away and Gara stood in the middle of the muddy field trying to think up a suitable excuse.

"We've all been busy. I've been trying to get back into shape. Almost dying takes a lot out of a man."

She pondered that, tilting her head, resting her hand on the top rail of the fence. "No." She finally said. "You've been avoiding me. Ever since we came back from the mountains."

He looked away and stubbornly insisted. "I've been practicing."

"You're as good as you're going to get, Gara."

He looked up at her sharply at that. "Not good enough."

"Ah. But only because you were thinking more of me than of yourself. Foolish."

"I suppose so." He started walking towards the gate.

"Do you want to spar with me?"

The question stopped him in his tracks. He looked over his shoulder at her. There was nothing but serious inquiry in her eyes.

"All right." Slowly. Carefully.

She walked around the fence to the shed where the practice weapons were kept. Chose a blade and entered the ring. They stood facing each other and she raised her weapon first. He drew his. Not the Murasume. He only fought for real with that.

She struck at him, a quick calculated feint to test the waters. She was adept at the blade -- she ought to be, having studied it for over twice his lifetime. But she was a sorceress before a swordswoman and he was the ninja master. He met the thrust and deflected it, warily, letting her circle him, letting her exert her effort moving around him, while he waited for her next move. Feint to the left. He blocked it. Bam, bam, bam. A series of blows trying to get him off balance. His balance was unshakable.

"How long have you loved me?"

He faltered and she came under his guard, nicked the underside of his arm with the business end of the blade. He transferred the sword the other hand, shaking the sting out of his arm.

"Does it matter?" He felt gawky of a sudden. And lumbering and uncouth. A plain, scar-faced man compared to what she had spent her whole life devoted to. He didn't know why she was tormenting him with it. Curiosity. Some perversity she had picked up from Schneider. She had picked up enough other habits from him.

"Yes." She answered him simply, earnestly, dropping the tip of her blade. "I think it does."

They stood in the mud of the practice field, with drawn weapons held at ready, as if it were still a sparring match. He stared at her. Her ears were at half mast, her skin showing the slight sheen of sweat.

"Since the first day I saw you don armor and ride out to meet battle."

Her eyes widened in surprise. "Why then?"

"Because at first I thought you were one of his toys. A concubine. A plaything with no will of your own and you surprised me. You turned out to be a woman of courage and power -- and compassion."

She laughed outright. "Compassion. You saw that in me back then? I thought it was well hid myself."

He didn't know if she were mocking him or herself. He walked past her towards the gate, finished with the match. She followed.

"Why would you love me, Gara?" she demanded, a desperate note in her voice.

"You already asked me that?"

"I don't understand." She cried. "You say you love me, yet you ask nothing of me. You've never asked anything of me."

"I don't want anything of you." He said putting the blade in its slot, not turning to look at her. She stood behind him silently and when he did turn to look, there was hurt in her eyes. She had taken it the wrong way.

"I didn't mean it like that. I do ---" he faltered. That wasn't right either. He took a breath and said rationally, calmly. "I need your friendship, Arshes. I need that more than anything else. The rest -- anything not given freely is no gift at all."

Philosophy. Ah, he hated himself for attempting it. But she stared for a moment, then nodded, handed him her blade and walked away from him.

It started to rain. Not snow, it was not quite cold enough for that, but a steady, gray drizzle that pitted the snow covering the yard and made the icicles start to drip puddles. A sign, perhaps, that spring thaw was on its way.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath43.htm



	43. Chapter 43

aftermath43

Forty-three

Gara put Arshes' practice sword beside his own on the rack, swearing to himself at his own blundering ineloquence. He grabbed the Murasume leaning against the interior wall of the shed and strapped it to his back, never far from it when he did not know what the future might bring. He stalked out into the courtyard to see where she had gone. She was half way to the castle doors. There were too many people loitering about for him to call for her to wait. Even if he'd had the courage to do so.

A cry came from the gates. The watch guard at the tower was gesturing down excitedly for the gatesmen to open the gates. Arshes paused on the steps. Gara took a step towards the gates, wary of what was causing such furor. The gates swung open and riders thundered in. A great cluster of horses and men. He caught of glimpse of Kiro and a moment of hope flared up. Had they found something? There were riders among them that were not uniformed Sta-Veron militia. There were the robes of priests among them. Gods, had they ferreted out Angelo's men?

He pushed forward through the press of bodies trying to get close to the incoming party. Trying to see who the prisoners were. There was an old woman huddled on the saddle before one of the guards, her wrinkled face twisted in fear. A holy swordsman in tunic and symbol of the goddess Eno Marta. Two priests. A young one and -- _Gods_. Gara swore soundly, shoving forward to grab hold of the bit of the high priest, Geo Note's horse. The animal tried to shy away and Gara put his strength into hold its head still. He glared up at the priest, who's hands were bound to the saddle as were those of his two men. He had a cut -- not a new one by the crusted blood -- on his temple. A bruise under one eye. He stared down at Gara with decisive brown eyes, not flinching a bit when one of the guards cried out that they'd captured men of the enemy.

"What the hell are you doing here, old man?" Gara demanded, and slapped a man away that tried to pull Geo Note from the saddle as his men were being dragged from theirs. Gara slipped a blade from his belt and cut the ropes binding the priest and the man climbed stiffly down on his own and stood before Gara rubbing his wrists.

"I've come to find my daughter."

"Your daughter?" Gara had to laugh at that. "You're a little late, don't you think? Should have entertained concern a long while back."

"I am not asking for your approval, Ninja Master."

"Whose then?" Arshes came up behind Gara, a deadlier presence by far.

"I've come to find my daughter and to speak with Dark Schneider."

Gara laughed. Kiro had come up, warily looking between them. "You know this man?" he asked. "Are his claims true?"

"That he's Yoko's father? Yes." Gara admitted. "As to what else he claims - that remains to be seen. Don't trust them just yet."

Kiro nodded. He signaled to his men and the younger priest and the holysword were hustled towards the castle. The old woman escorted at a more sedate pace by a guardsman who seemed as ready to steady her step as prevent her escape. Gara lifted a brow at Kiro and the captain shrugged.

"A woman that old, to have survived the journey over the mountains -- such endurance is respected in the north."

"Who is she?"

"She was with them."

Gara swept a hand towards the castle, indicating Geo Note should proceed him. The priest lifted his head resolutely and started walking. Then hesitated in his stride.

Schneider stood in the door way, a look of cold outrage on his face.

"Shit." Gara muttered, stepping forward and wrapping his fingers about the priest's arm. "Just keep walking." He suggested. "And pray to your gods that he's in a better mood than he has been the last few days."

"I doubt it." Arshes said softly from behind him. And on that, they were in complete agreement.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing coming here?" Schneider had Geo Note by the front of his robes, half dragging the priest off his feet. The other priest made little sounds of protest in the hands of two guards. The holysword stood rigid with a blade at his throat. Schneider wanted to blast Geo Note so bad the heat simmered in the air around them. How dare he come here? How dare he bring his holier than thou self anywhere near Schneider after what he had participated in. He had stood with the rest of those self-righteous bastards in Meta-Rikan and condemned him at the word of the Prophet and then piled sin upon sin and promised Yoko to the monster.

"What the fuck made you think I wouldn't erase you from the face of the earth?"

"I came to see Yoko." Geo Note did not struggle against the grip. "I came to find my daughter."

"Well you can't see her." Schneider snarled. "She doesn't want to see you. You gave up any claim to her when you promised her to _Him!"_

"I didn't know." Geo Note's voice broke just a little. "I didn't know then, what I do now."

"You can die with the knowledge then."

The whole of the hall was hushed in fearful silence. They were all blurred faces to Schneider in his fury. All he could see was Geo Note, who had stymied him time after time. Manipulated him. Betrayed him. Betrayed Yoko.

"This is her father? This is the lady's father?" A voice from the outside reached him. The house keeper had started forward and been caught by Arshes' hand. The woman's eyes were round with concern. "Maybe he can help her, my lord."

He did not want to think that Geo Note could while he couldn't.

"Help her?" The Priest repeated the words. "By the goddess, what is wrong with Yoko?"

Schneider glared at Keitlan. At the desperately hopeful look in the woman's eyes. At the frozen faces scattered about the great hall. "Damn you." He hissed and thrust the priest away from him so hard the man stumbled and went down, catching his fall on a hand and a hip. Not a weak man, Geo Note. Or an easily intimated one. He rose, straightening his robes and matched Schneider's glare.

"Where is Yoko? What's happened to her?"

Schneider drew a breath in disgust and whirled, stabbing a finger at Keitlan, who backed up just a little at his damning stare. "You seem to think he'll help. You tell him." He stalked past her, brushing by Gara and Arshes, who parted to make room for him to go. To flee. To retreat. He seethed at what he had been reduced to. Afraid to hear the words recited -- afraid to see the horror on the face of someone else who loved her. Afraid most of all that it wouldn't make a bit of difference when it came right down to it.

But he slunk back anyway, out of desperate curiosity, when Keitlan and Gara had taken the priest to Yoko's room. Stood in the doorway while Gara sat by the fire with his daughter, talking softly, hold her hands. She seemed to know him. She smiled at him and spoke about the baby and trivial things like the warming weather and the tapestries she had purchased for the walls and how nice everyone was to her here. She wouldn't acknowledge that her home had ever been elsewhere. There were certain names her eyes went blank at the mention of.

The Great Priest left after a long while, meeting Schneider's eyes warily as he passed. Keitlan was in the hallway. Gara leaned against the wall further down, his head down as if he were dozing.

"I had begun to suspect --" Geo Note said in a low, trembling voice. "- - that he was not all he said -- but never that he could do _this._ May the goddess forgive me, but if I could kill him with my own hands, I would."

"That pleasure will be mine." Schneider growled.

The priest sighed, cast one look over his shoulder at Yoko, then said. "Is there somewhere we might talk -- peacefully?"

"It depends on what you have to say. And at whose behest you came."

"I came of my own accord -- but unofficially I carry other news."

Schneider waved a hand carelessly. "Down in the hall then. But be warned, my patience is worn thin and I'm not in the mood for your holier than thou assumptions. I'd just as soon see you burn as listen to your worthless opinions."

"You won't receive any. Not today."

Gara pushed off from the wall and proceeded them down the hall. The tables before the hearth accommodated them, and Geo Note's priest and guard, Kiro and a few of his men, Arshes and the curious old woman who had come with the priest's party. Schneider had hardly looked at her, but as he diffidently took a seat at the head of the table she caught his attention. Her small, sunken black eyes were fixed on him intently. The distinctive wrinkles of her face and the sunken cant of her cheeks were familiar. He leaned forward, amazed to discover the old hedge witch from Thrax's compound at the edge of the Great forest.

"You? What are you doing here?"

"You remember me do you?" She cackled softly. "I would have thought one such as I to be below your notice, my lord."

He lifted a brow.

"The charm wore off. Thrax figured out what had been done and who had made it. He was less than pleased. I had resigned myself to being burned at the stake when this generous priest and his people happened by and saved me from that fate. It seemed we had an acquaintance or two in common."

"Oh well, it was a good charm while it lasted. What's your name, old woman?"

"Ayntha"

He nodded, accepting it and her. "You are welcomed here not as an enemy."

"If I might be so bold, great lord, this priest is not here as one either."

Schneider's lips tightened. He waved her to silence and she humbly bowed her head in regard of the command.

"So what do you have to say for yourself, Geo Note? Any excuses for what you did?"

"Nothing I did was conceived with anything but the good of Yoko and my people at heart. Like everyone else I believed the Prophet was the man he claimed to be. I believed the god spoke through him."

"Gullible fool. _You_ at least should have known better. You were ready to give Yoko to him against her will. You knew she didn't want it."

"She was beyond rational at the time. I believed she needed a guidance that I could not give her. The Prophet offered his suit. It seemed reasonable."

"He's a mind witch, old man. He can make you think slitting your own throat is reasonable if that's what he wants."

"I -- recognize that now. A priest of his -- a man who used to worship the goddess, confessed a guilt to me. He confessed that a messenger of my daughter's sent to find ninja master Gara -- intercepted by the Prophet's men. That the Prophet himself -- killed him. I took this information to the king, but the rally and cry for the Prophet's safe return is so strong that all of Meta-Rikan -- indeed all of the southern cities are in tumult. If we denounce him now the infrastructure of the whole church of the One God will crumble. The south may very well be reduced to civil war."

"So Larz is going to sit there and do nothing?" Schneider snapped, disgusted. "That fucking little coward."

"What can he do? There are only hints that the Prophet is darker of nature than he led us to believe. Nothing blatant. Nothing to make the people understand that they've been led astray. Anything he's done could conceivably be explained away as strident means of opposing you -- who have evidenced repeatedly that you are a threat to the peace of the people of the south. Politically he is at an impasse until more evidence against the prophet can be found."

"Politics! My politics on the matter are find Angelo and blow him off the face of the earth. I could care less what the sniveling religious minded people of the south think."

"Which is why you never wanted to be king -- just conqueror. You couldn't have handled the responsibility of ruling a people. Too boring." Gara noted quietly. "But, he's got a point. Somebody's got to think about keeping the south together."

Schneider glared at the ninja master.

"Larz did not send me here." Geo Note said. "But unofficially I bring with me his inquiry as to the standing of the Southern Alliance's relationship with the North."

"How the hell should I know?" Schneider snarled. "I don't rule the North. Kall-Su does -- but oh, the Prophet who you're all pussyfooting around denouncing has him holed away somewhere. So I guess the south's standing with the North is up in the air. Now, the South's standing with me is damned unstable - just for your information. Next time I see Larz I'm going to do something violent and probably lethal. Any more questions about relationships and what not?"

Geo Note's countenance zeroed out blankly. A weary priest's expression of extreme patience in the face of illogical adversity. Carefully, slowly he said. "We have taken a demon into our midst. A worse evil than you ever were, because we accepted him with all of our hearts and gave him our souls for the keeping. That is not an easy mistake to accept. Not for kings or common men - or priests. There are those who will not accept it at all. What we face may be a holy war. Goddess help me, but I would gladly give my life to avoid such an atrocity. But if it cannot be avoided, then support from the north -- from the lands who are not embroiled in the religion of the One God - may well be what keeps the south from toppling into chaos."

"Let it topple." Schneider hissed. "I'm done with it."

"No." Arshes' soft voice trailed his last word like an echo. "If it comes to that -- to avoid such bloodshed again -- I will lend my support to stop it. There are too many orphans already."

"I too." Gara said.

Schneider stared at the both of them sullenly. Outnumbered by those closest to him. All he needed was Yoko to come downstairs and declare him a stubborn fool.

"I don't care. I don't care what you do, as long as no one stands between me and Angelo. They can make a martyr out of him for all I care. Call him Saint Angelo the tragically misunderstood. But I will take out you, Geo Note and Larz and every religious zealot in the south that stands between me and the Prophet if I have to."

They walked down the dirt road to the church on holy day, he and mother, she holding his hand in hers. She had on her best dress, the one she wore to church or village festivities. She looked so beautiful. The village women were jealous of her. Kall understood that, even with a child's naive perception. They envied her beauty and her grace and the fact that she was the daughter of the village's religious leader. So they talked about her behind her back. They ostracized her from their social circles and never let her forget her sin. All because of him. Grandfather and that other priest had told him that. Made him understand that damning fact. To have shared her body with a demon was one thing but to have carried its seed and birthed it's child was another. She was forever blackened.

They pointed at her -- at them, when they entered the church and walked down the aisle to take a seat on the first pew. Grandfather always insisted they sit in front on holy day, where he could see them, where the congregation could see that his sinner daughter and her unholy get were actively attempting at redemption.

He didn't want to come today. He was terrified to come today, though there was no avoiding it. He didn't know why. It was no different than any other holy day. Grandfather would sermonize and preach and condemn all the sins of the physical flesh and the people would nod and chant the appropriate prayers to cleanse their souls of the week's transgressions and that would be that. Except that the prayers never seemed to be enough for Kall. Grandfather said they would never be enough. And the new priest, the one with the terrifying eyes seconded this opinion. It was because of the new priest he was afraid to come to holy day. He was afraid Grandfather would let him preach and that the man would single Kall out of the crowd and denounce him personally.

_The only way to save her soul is his death_. Those words would not leave his head. Those words beat a tempo in the back of his mind. He didn't want to die. But he didn't want to hurt mother either. He needed someone to tell him what to do, but there was no one other than mother than did not despise him.

"I love you Kall." Mother bent over to whisper against his ear. He looked up at her in surprise that she should speak during the sermon to mention it. "I'm the only one who'll ever love you. All the rest of them just want to use you, sweetling. But they don't love you like I do."

He stared, wide eyed. Grandfather's words blared in the background. The voice of the congregation was a chorus of well worn prayers.

"But you need to be good. You need to be very good." The congregation echoed her words. Grandfather did. He blinked, disoriented. "You've got to strive towards forgiveness to help lesson the stain on my soul. To wash away the sin. I don't want to die and burn in hell because of you, my love."

Tears welled up in her eyes. She reached out her arms and pulled him close and all he could do was hang limply in her grasp, traumatized by her words. Someone pulled him out of her arms and thrust him to his knees at the foot of the alter. The other priest stood over him, demanding he beg the god for absolution. He could hear mother crying behind him. His own throat closed up and he couldn't utter the words. The priest hit him. A back handed slap that knocked him over onto the wood floor. His head cracked against it.

Stone floor. Not wood. His vision wavered. The dream clouded with reality. The priest was still there, hovering over him. There was a great alter, but the church was wrong. There were no faithful congregation. No grandfather. No mother. He looked for on the pews behind him but they were empty. Tears gathered on his lashes and he blinked them away, furious and devastated at once. He could not remember coming here, to this dark and oppressing temple in the Place Without Windows. He could not remember falling asleep to dream or when he had not been asleep or awake for that matter. It blurred together so seamlessly he thought he might have lost his mind entirely. Only the anger, despair, hurt that the Prophet had dragged his mother into his dreams - that she denounced him in them for the destruction of her soul made him come out of the daze.

He swung around, glaring. "You beast! Leave her out of it."

Angelo stood impassively. "Beast? Am I only half a human?"

"You're not even that." He cried. He could not stop shaking. He could not stop the images in his head.

"Submit to the mercy of the High God. Beg for his forgiveness so that your wretched soul might be salvaged."

"No." Kall shook his head desperately. "The gods have no mercy. They have no interest. Its only men like you who use their name to control the naive."

Angelo kicked him hard enough to knock his hands out from under him and he curled to protect himself from the further blows. Despite his spinning head he tried to call up power. Any power. He didn't care what responded or what it did as long as it interceded in this humiliation. Something did come. But it was like throwing dart, blindfolded and drunk with no idea where the target was.

A crack of energy. The Prophet cried out, more in surprise than hurt and held up his arm as something snaked across the room, recoiled of a warded wall and hit the great symbol of the High God that rested atop the alter. That was apparently not warded. It cracked down the middle, bits and chunks of it crumbling to fall on the podium below. Angelo cried out in rage and the next blow that hit him was arcane. A giant hand might have picked him up and tossed him like a rag doll across the room. He hit a column and rebounded, slumped to the floor bonelessly, only half aware of Angelo's shrieks of incrimination.

It hurt. His body cried out in protest of the treatment and his mind half drifted to that place where mother and grandfather stood in the church. Someone yanked him up. Not Angelo. Bigger, stronger hands. Sinakha registered in his vision. Harsh, impassive face, even in the presence of his master's wraith.

"How dare you!! How dare you!!" Angelo was screaming, all of his serenity and his superior contempt turned to frothing rage. "No forgiveness for this. None!!" he cried.

Sinakha slammed him face forward against a column. Grabbed one wrist then went around and caught the other one and held him pressed there from the other side with an unshakable grip.

Then Angelo lashed him with something from behind. It cut through shirt and skin with a stinging agony that traveled the length of his body. It hit again and he threw his head back, coming out of the stupor hitting the column had thrown him into. He couldn't see what it was the Prophet wielded. He wasn't certain he wanted to. It burned like fire and stung like ice and all the while Angelo was screeching words like Demonspawn and devil and wretched malefactor. _Sinner. Sinner. Sinner. _

He fought against Sinakha's strength frantically, writhing to escape the torment. He couldn't breath from it. It stole the air from his lungs and filled them with fire. He didn't know where he got the breath to scream. But he did. He incoherently begged for it to stop. And that seemed to do nothing but drive Angelo to further fits of violence. It wasn't until he was whimpering, almost mindless from it, that the lash - the whip - whatever it was evaporated into thin air out of Angelo's hand and the Prophet came up behind him, caught a handful of hair and pulled his head back so far he thought his neck would snap. He had no strength to fight against it. Angelo could break his neck right now if he wanted and it would be a welcome release.

The Prophet's breath was hot against his cheek, the man's body pressing into the fire the whipping had made of Kall's back.

"You shouldn't have done that. You'll be punished for that."

Hadn't he been? The Prophet was trembling. The fanatical rage was still in his eyes, but there was something else. A thrill over the power, the pain, the supplication for mercy that had been ignored - that bordered on lust. Like the smell of fear excited him.

Kall made a little sound of dismay and shut his eyes, wanting to find a hole somewhere and crawl into it. Even the nightmares seemed preferable to this.

Angelo let go of him. Sinakha released his wrists and he had no stamina to support his own weight. He slid down the column, slumping to his side on the floor. Darkness and light swam before his vision. He wanted desperately to go to the darkness. His back pulsed with agony. It felt as if every inch of skin had been stripped off. His shirt was wet, he could feel the wetness seeping around his ribs.

"Shall we start again?" The Prophet said, in control of his emotions once more. His face back to placid serenity.

Kall blinked up at him dazedly. Angelo strode back towards the alter. Sinakha bent down, grabbed his arm and dragged him along in his wake. Blood smeared the floor behind him. He cried out in pain, grayed out from it only to find himself in a heap before the alter when he came back to his senses.

"Recite the invocation of forgiveness. You know the words. _He _ may not heed you the first time, but you can appeal again and again and maybe one time you might be heard."

He wouldn't come out of it. Lily stood uncertainly, her fingers on the edge of the thick door and wondered what she ought to do. She was risking everything coming here. Having anything to do with the Master's new obsession would be the death of her if he found out. But he had turned into almost an obsession with her as well. He spoke to her. He looked at her as if she were not an object, even though she knew he had seen the slave mark on her hand. He wanted to know who she was. No one had ever cared before. She wouldn't tell him, because she was ashamed to admit that she didn't know if Lily was her real name. It was the one her first master had called her, but she seemed to recall something else. Something plainer, more fitting for the daughter of starving peasants.

She knew his name. She had heard the master say it. She whispered it to herself in the shadows. Kall-Su. He was so so much better than she was. She knew that. Even though he was as much a prisoner here as she was, he was something to reckon with in the world outside, because no ordinary man would hold the master's attention so fully. An ordinary man would not have fought against the master's wishes. Not for long at any rate.

But something was wrong now. Something was broken. There was the dark stain of blood over his clothing. He lay half on his side, his head tucked up beneath one arm -- silent and unmoving. Barely breathing. He made no response when she called out. So she hesitantly approached and touched his shoulder. She felt as if she were overstepping her bounds with even that small contact. But nothing. She saw his back through the shreds of the shirt and made a little moaning sound of pity. She had seen men beaten before and this was as bad as the worst she had witnessed. He must have angered the master terribly. But not enough to kill him. She had seen men killed for little more than being in the wrong place when the master was in one of his moods.

She crouched and tentatively touched his shoulder again, calling his name softly, biting her lip when he did not respond. His fingers clutched the bed covers, as if trying to anchor to something to keep from being swept uncontrollable away. Lily backed away, until her shoulders touched the wall, then slid down to kneel, staring at him.

She thought of a song she knew that had always pleased her last master. He had always said she had a touch of healing magic in her voice, but had never explained how or why. He ought to have known, being a wizard, but she never inquired, superstitious of such things herself. She had never healed a thing in her life, but she had soothed and calmed with her voice. So she sat against the wall and sang the song, her voice a sweet, drifting melody in the dank confines of the cell. She finished it and started another, voice pitched low so it would not carry to far into the hall. It became more a thing she did for herself than him. It had been so long since she had voiced anything but the hymns the master insisted she sing. It felt good to sing of springtime and true love and a sailor's bawdy adventure with a sheepherder's daughter.

His fingers tightened on the sheets. His lashes fluttered slowly and she caught her breath, frozen on a high note. He shifted his arm slightly to look at her and his eyes turned almost violet with the pain the motion caused him. He shuddered and she bit her lip. She did not know what to do now.

"I'm sorry." She whispered.

He didn't say anything. Just shut his eyes and pulled his arm back down to cover his face. There was a difference to his eyes, that went beyond the pain. Something abjectly disconsolate. Had the master broken that part of him that rebelled and broke the code of silence in that place? If he had, then she would be thrust back into endless silence. Endless isolation. And she would eventually lose her mind.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath44.htm



	44. Chapter 44

aftermath44

Forty-four

She went away and Kall-Su couldn't get his bearings. He had drifted aimlessly between blackness and the nauseating, restless fever dreams. These dreams were more flashing images of nightmarish intensity than the realistic renderings the Prophet sent him. He couldn't find his way out of it, until the quiet, unintrusive sound of singing gradually made itself known. And then he drifted with that for the longest while, anchored by the soothing sound of a woman's voice.

Then she went away and the song went with her and he despaired. He didn't remember her going. Just swam against the current to awareness and there was silence again. Overpowering, monumental silence, as if all the living things had crawled away to abandon him to the dark, windowless stone coffin that this place had become. The thought of dying crossed his mind. A fleeting, abstract notion. A passage to escape. Who would care?

He drifted off again. Came back to the scuffling sounds of someone in his cell, vaguely saw shadowed figures moving about. He shut his eyes and they went away.

"Does it hurt?" Angelo purred, leaning over the cot, face a shadowed mask in the darkness. Recoil in hate - pain - fear. And the Prophet laughs at all of it. Pulls him up by the front of his tunic, drags him off the cot and he can hardly gather the strength not to sprawl bonelessly to the floor.

"Pray to the god for the souls of all those unfortunate ones you've destroyed." Angelo hissed in his hear. "Admit to the god that you are a damned soul. A wretched sinner who may never receive true absolution."

The small stone alter waited in silent attendance for those utterances. "What do you want of me?" A heartfelt plea. He teetered on the last legs of his endurance to fight the madness.

"Your soul." Angelo whispered. "I want you to hand me your soul."

He blinked in confusion in that, not understanding.

"You will." Angelo promised. He wrapped an arm about Kall-Su's neck of a sudden, dragging him backwards, off his knees and onto his feet. Slammed him against the wall where the head of the cot rested, grabbed one wrist and drew it upwards. There was a ring in the stone that had not been there before. Newly set into the wall, with a set of manacles attached by short lengths of chain.

No.

"No." He cried in panic. Fought against it, but his body betrayed him with its weakness. One wrist fastened with a snap of the lock and he was lost. Hardly a reason to fight against the other one being caught and locked into the cuff, other than the fear of what would happen once he was helpless.

"I told you there would be punishment to pay." Angelo declared, in his fire and brimstone voice. As if he were preaching a sermon to a lot of avid parishioners. The bloody tatters of his shirt were ripped off his shoulders. That alone hurt. He caught his breath, trying not to shiver. "If you will not learn one way, you will learn the other."

Through hazed senses he felt some slight bit of arcane power stir. From the corner of his eye he caught a faint snakish outline glowing in Angelo's hand. What use pride? What use self-respect at the beginning if he would loose it at the end?

"I'm sorry." He said desperately, as if he were the child in his dreams again and this were Grandfather he was trying to convince. "I didn't mean to do it. It won't happen again, I swear."

"You swear to what? To the demons in hell that spawned you?" the lash kissed his lower back. He hissed in pain, clenched his fists and tried to think how to reason his way out of this while his mind was still coherent.

"No, no, to the One God. Let me beg forgiveness of him. That's what you want, right?"

He hated the whining tone in his voice. The lash licked his shoulders, the tip of it snaking about to burn into his throat. He spasmed against the manacles, pressed against the cold grit of the wall as if it might swallow him up and deliver him from the torment.

"The One God will not hear the prayers of those that don't truly repent. You can beg for absolution for eternity and if your soul is black and your heart impure, then you will always be rebuffed."

Slash. Slash. He cried out, yanking uselessly at the ring. Then why hammer at him so relentlessly to utter the damn prayers? To beg for absolution, if Angelo was so convinced that the one god would turn a deaf ear.

_Ah, but eventually he will. _ The words slithered inside his head. _When you have no pride left. No will but what I allow you to possess. Then he may turn his eyes upon you. I need him to forgive you. A damned vessel is of no use to me._

Incomprehension. He wasn't even sure he heard it, as the agony of the lash spread over him. Engulfed his[][1] senses until all he could understand was the pain. It hurt so bad, he could not even reach the bliss of oblivion. He was not certain when it stopped. The sound of sobbing echoed in his ears, but it seemed to come from a distant place. His wrists bled from where the cuffs had cut into them, holding his sagging weight. Angelo was still talking. Angelo was pacing behind him like a caged animal. The words were nothing to Kall but meaningless babble. He tasted blood in his mouth.

Angelo undid the manacles with a touch and a whisper of Unlocking magic. Kall crumpled to the floor and lost his senses before he reached the stone.

Came to at a scratching at the door. The turning of the rusty handle. He blinked dazedly, still sprawled against he wall. The door would not open at someone's attempt. It had never been locked before. It was subtly terrifying that it was now. As if he'd had some freedom of choice before that had now been taken away from him.

He pushed himself up against the wall, moaning at the agony the movement caused him, wide eyed at the expectation of Angelo walking through that door. But no door in this place would be barred to the Prophet, so it was not him. No one else would have a care to try his door and fail at it, save the girl and why she did so was beyond him. The scratching stopped. She was going away. He tried to say something, but his throat was so raw that he couldn't utter more than a pained croak. Had he screamed so much? He couldn't remember.

He dozed. He had made it as far as the cot. Rested his head on his arms along its edge, having no strength to pull himself up onto it. He saw his mother talking with Grandfather at the doors of the church. He stood near the vestry door at the back of the naive, trying to overhear their words. Grandfather was yelling about something. About him? Mother stood there with her head bowed, her hands folded before her. She was crying. About him. He knew it was about him. Tears welled up in his own eyes. Guilt that somehow he hurt her without even knowing how. He turned to run away and the new priest caught him by the shoulders. Long, bony fingers biting into his flesh. He was so surprised his mouth opened in shock, a scream trembling to be released. The priest clamped a hand over his mouth and dragged him backwards, into the vestry, shutting the door between them and the church outside.

The priest bent down close to his face and hissed. "Spying were you? Degenerate little half-breed."

He stared up at the terrifying priest, eyes round with fear and shock. He did not want to be alone with this man in the small robe lined walls of the vestry. He did not want to have the man's hands on him, preventing escape.

"I --I wasn't." He tried to protest, but his words came out shaky and tremulous, as if deep down he knew -- he just knew -- that denying anything this man said was wrong. The fingers tightened on his shoulders, and he started crying. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I won't do it again." Hysterically apologizing for a thing he had not done. Anything to get out from under those hands and those fervent, mad eyes that looked at him as if he were a thing to devour, while at the same time the thin lips called him unholy filth. He was so afraid his whole body shook. The priest had never looked at him like that before. Never before with anything but cold detachment and revulsion.

"Please let me go." He begged in a tiny, hiccuping voice.

"No. You need a lesson."

His wrists were grabbed, wrenched up over his head, his body dragged along with them. Fire burned along his back and his head spun in disorientation, not knowing where that all consuming pain had come from. He didn't know where the stone wall had come from, or the harsh manacles that cut into his wrists. He thought if he kept screaming mother would hear and come to see what was wrong. He thought there had to be an end to this. The fire bit into his lower back, across his thighs, scorched the tender flesh beneath his arms. He screamed and cried and writhed. He would never ever do anything bad again. He promised it, over and over. He screamed for his mother, until the priest told him she didn't care. Until the priest told him she ordained this. Told him she thought he needed to be purged of the evil that cursed in his blood.

He went still and silent at that, crushed beyond what the pain could bring. He believed it. He believed it because she had told him as much. Because she had to have heard his cries and she hadn't come.

"Do you understand that you are lost?" the priest whispered against his back. And he thought he was. He couldn't say it. The priest's hands turned him around, so that his back grated against the wall. He blacked out from the hurt. But the priest brought him back with a sly little tweak inside his head. The priest's fingers touched the relatively whole skin of his stomach, the fingers trembling.

"How badly do you want to die?" he asked.

The boy didn't know how to answer. The boy's mind blanked with bewilderment and fear. Somewhere the man curled tighter inside his protective shell, trying to distance himself, but failing because his tormentor knew the path beyond his defenses.

He hung there and shivered, half way between the dream and the reality, mind spinning with the question put to him. The priest -- the Prophet took a shaky breath, almost smiled at him, as if satisfied with the lack of answer, then he leaned close and whispered.

"Such a beautiful body to be conceived in sin. When its mine I shall atone for the sin of its making by washing the evil of all those that oppose the will of the One God from the face of the earth."

The Prophet's lips brushed against his, fluttered away, then pressed back against him in a guttural excitement, one more act of possession that he couldn't fight against, could only endure while the pain ate at his consciousness and threatened to drown him.

"Soon." Was the last thing he heard before it pulled him down.

The castle was abuzz with the arrival of Geo Note. The servants whispered among themselves in speculation, ears riveted to the casual conversations of the people who were close to the matters close to their hearts. All of them worried over the lady Yoko's condition. All of them had their own notions what ought to be done, though no one of them dared voice those opinions anywhere near the dark wizard, who had the lot of them trembling in their shoes. His fits were lengthy and destructive. Half the wall surrounding the castle court yard was a crumbled mess, from the last one Forty feet of wall reduced to bits and pieces of mortar and stone and all from one tantrum caused by an argument with the lady Yoko's priestly father while the two of them were yelling at each other in the courtyard. There was a clear view of the city from the kitchen doorway now. The merchants who brought wares didn't even bother with the front gates, finding it easier to pick their way past the rubble. The guards were in a frenzy.

Though not all of them were certain exactly where their own lord was, they all knew he was in some grave danger from the anxious faces of captain Kiro's men when they gathered together to speak of it and the quiet and sometimes tense conversations between the castle's other wizardly occupants. Quite a few of the more superstitious servants left little offerings on doorsteps of milk or bread, hoping to appease the spirits who dwelled in earth and air, and have them bless their lord where ever he might be.

Gara sat on a bench outside the kitchen, chewing on a sweetmeat stolen fresh from the cooling racks, and watched the men clear the rubble away from the ruined wall. He didn't like the wall being down. Did not like at all the vulnerability it placed the castle under. He cursed Schneider for not having a shred of self-control. But he understood the pressure. He understood the frustration.

"Lord Gara." A boy ran across the yard towards him. He waited for the youngster to reach him, lifted a thick brow at the boy's red face, his puffing breaths of exertion.

"What's the rush about, boy?" he asked calmly.

"The lady sent me to fetch you."

"The lady?"

The boy looked about as if he were spreading a dread secret and whispered. "The elvin one, lord Gara. She gave me a copper to run and find you."

"Did she now? And what were you to tell me when you'd accomplished that task?"

"She's at the Raven and the Otter Tavern. She wants you to join her."

Both brows rose. Odd inspiration for Arshes to have that would spur her to send a boy to fetch him. But then, after the practice field, he didn't know quite what she was thinking. But he rose anyway, after he'd sent the boy off, and walked through the rubble of the wall and down the thawing city street outside. Spring was most definitely in the air. The Sta-Veron natives claimed they could smell its sweet nectar in the air. It was early coming. A sign, some said good luck in the future. Gara hoped so. They were due it.

The tavern was one preferred by the castle garrison. Not particularly genteel on the outside, but serving a fine selection of ale and wines, and a tasty fare. There were a few soldiers drinking at the bar. Arshes sat at a table by the fire, with her back to the door. She had a bottle of wine by her elbow and a half filled glass that her finger's toyed with.

"Drinking by yourself in the middle of the day." He observed. She looked up at him dryly.

"You state the obvious so deftly, Gara."

He hid a grin and sat down opposite her. The girl at the bar brought a second glass.

"What's the occasion?"

"I was thinking." She tapped her short, hard nails on the tabletop. "That if it comes to civil war in the south -- if there's a need to intervene - that we ought to join forces. We work well together." She stated this fact as if were a offhand strategic anomaly that she had only just noted. He sat back in his chair, face careful neutral.

"I've always thought so." He agreed.

"Darshe is being selfish refusing to associate himself with the problem."

Darshe --- selfish? That was a novel idea from Arshes.

"He's carrying a grudge. I thought you were ready to separate Larz's head from his body not so long ago, too."

"I was. I still would if he offered harm towards my friends, but I understand that he was deceived by this Prophet. I understand that even a man of Geo Note's strong character was misled. It says a great deal about this evil man we face. If Larz makes amends for his mistakes, then I will hold no grudge."

"That's good to hear, Arshes. There was a time when you would have."

"And you would not have?" She asked, then lifted a hand to stop him from answering. "No. You were ever more reasonable than the rest of us. Ever quicker to see what escaped our notice."

"I hope it doesn't come to that." Gara said quietly. "I'm finding myself dreading the thought of another war. I think, after this is over, I'd like to sit back and just relax for a summer or two."

"You're not getting _that_ old, Gara." And there was a hint of a smile on her face.

He wasn't quite so certain. But, if one were going to go campaigning again. What better companion than the Thunder Empress?

Schneider rubbed the bridge of his nose, cursing blackly under his breath. He was tired and irritable and one way or the other had not seen much of sleep lately. The great priest was annoying him. The great priest cast what Schneider perceived to be dark, accusing stares his way whenever their paths happened to cross, which was not a great deal, since the day the man had arrived. Geo Note was not a fool, after all. He was not a man to blithely tempt fate by positioning himself to frequently within the scope of Schneider's bad temper. He and his little priestling, when they weren't blathering holy drivel about the goddess and her benediction around Yoko in the deluded idea that bringing her closer to her faith might snap her out of her self-deception, were harassing the castle folk with their religious talk and even going out into the city. They weren't particularly preaching. Geo Note had never, Schneider had to admit, been a fire and brimstone sort of priest, but they were most certainly in Schneider's estimation testing the religious waters of Sta-Veron. They were cool waters to be sure. Kall-Su had never encouraged the spread of religious organization through his domain, always being a touch shy of it himself. There was little chance of Geo Note starting a blazing rush to worship the goddess, but it irked Schneider just the same. Priest irked Schneider in general.

His head pounded with the last bout of far-sensing. It hurt as much from the throbbing pressure of frustration born of failure as from exertion. A fine sheen of sweat touched his skin. It was almost warm in the castle for a change. Amazing. He walked into the main hall, hungry from the Seeking, by passed the women sewing by the fire, all of whom watched him from beneath their lashes, and into the kitchen. He had come to rather like the old cook. She wasn't afraid of him. She made lurid suggestions which amused him. She always gave him the choice delectables from her cooking.

It smelled of roasting pork today and baking bread. There were cooling apple tarts on racks by the ovens.

"Well hello handsome boy." She cackled, her hands coated with flour. He never corrected her on the truth of their age differences. "Come for a tumble with old cook?"

He summoned a lecherous grin, despite the headache and the strain. "Is that the going price for a bit of your cooking, old crone?"

"Perhaps a juicy kiss will do. I expect tongues."

He laughed outright and selected a tart. Stood against the counter and downed it in two bites, while Cook kneaded dough. Her helpers sat along the table against the wall, peeling sweet potatoes. The old witch, Ayntha sat among them, deftly slicing skin from a knotty potato. He stole another tart.

"You like to make the air come alive with all the power you pour into it." The old witch commented. "Even a dullard like me can feel the crackle of your efforts."

His mood slipped back into shadow, reminded of his failures.

"Not that it does any good." He muttered, downing the tart, the heat of the kitchen suddenly becoming unwelcome. He strode for the open door, pulling his hair off the back of his neck to feel the coolness. The old witch's voice drifted after him.

"Enough power in the air to pull spring back weeks before its due." He wasn't sure that was true, but hedge witches tended towards superstition, practicing a different sort of magic than sorcerers who held true power.

"Must be hidden well and truly if all that can't find what you seek." He stood in the doorway, ignoring her babbling. Half hearing the sound of her voice as she told the women peeling roots with her of her own practice over the years. Of how she used to make a fancy bit of coin finding lost children and the like, using herb lore and witchcraft and nothing more than a lock of hair to create a divination that would lead to the lost soul. Witchcraft and herb lore and the complex creation of spells that relied on powers other than those generated by the caster herself. So far below a wizard such as himself as to be almost unnoticed and most certainly not deserving of his attention. The spells of hedge witches were almost a throwback to the witchcraft practiced in dark attics by the ostracized society of witches who practiced in the old world. Real power was a fantasy, all they'd had to rely on was the benevolence of the spirit world and that they got only rarely.

He leaned against the door, watching men cart cut stone into the courtyard to repair the wall. He and Geo Note had been talking about Yoko. The Great Priest had mentioned something about Yoko, being a good, religious girl, probably holding a fair amount of shame over the notion of having a child out of wedlock. How that might be eating at her as well as the loss of the child itself. Schneider had not agreed and the conversation had degenerated from there.

He recalled seeing a thick old book in Kall's library. Augury's, divination's and spells of the ancient world. It had been nestled within a section of texts concerning the concocting of spells using symbols and herbs. Trivial reading, he thought. But, Kall had always had a taste for meaningless knowledge. Angelo was hidden with wards strong enough to keep out his most strenuous questing. He wondered if something that held nothing of his power, no hint of the magic he used, might find the scent of what he sought. A lock of hair?

He had been trying for weeks to find a mental trail. Would a physical one be easier to locate?

[NEXT][2]

   [1]: manacles.htm
   [2]: aftermath45.htm



	45. Chapter 45

aftermath45

Forty-five

Schneider delved into Kall-Su's library with a fanatical passion. Pulling down a volume he thought he wanted and scouring its pages for some hint of the spell making he wanted. Carelessly he tossed priceless books aside if they offered nothing he wanted. In others he found passages he thought might be useful and read and reread them, marking the places for future reference. He found bits and pieces of things that would be of use to him. Various positions of the stars which made some spell casting more potent. Various components without which a proper casting could not be achieved. He had never cared a whit about where the stars were. Had never bothered with the mundane mechanics of lowbrow witchery. He had always made his own moments and man and demon and angel be damned if they didn't like it.

He sat behind Kall's desk with the collected volumes of several mortal lifetimes strewn around him, witchlight glowing eerily over his shoulder, writing notes occasionally on a fine piece of parchment he'd found in the desk. He summoned the old woman once, needing her lore in herbcraft to clarify a point for him. She looked at his scribblings, at the dark path his search for a casting seemed to take and her rheumy eyes paled in fright.

"Only the dark gods will respond from such a casting as this." She murmured. "No witch with a shred of reason would risk their notice."

"I'm not a witch." He said offhandedly. "Let them notice me. Who's to say I haven't already trafficked with them?"

She looked spooked then and scurried away. Arshes came later, when the night had been driven away by the first dregs of morning. She stood in the mess he had made of the immaculate study and he hardly noticed her.

"What are you doing?" she finally asked. "Reduced to herb lore and spell crafting?"

He half glanced up at her from under his bangs, then back to the book he was studying.

"This is useless." She admonished him. "A waste of time spent better elsewhere. What use have we ever had for this kind of magic?"

"Go away, Arshes." He turned a page.

"What if he's dead, Darshe? It's been nearly a month. He was probably dead within the day. That's why we've not been able to sense him."

"Then I'll find his corpse. If you've nothing to offer, then leave me alone."

She went silent for a moment, then said low voiced. "What if he's in hell, Darshe? Will you go there after him? Haven't you had enough of that?"

He didn't respond. She left eventually, but he tapped his fingers on the page of a book thoughtfully in the echo of her words. If the spell he concocted succeeded, it very well might take him to the depths of hell, if that was where the scent led. He did not particularly relish the notion of revisiting that realm. Not just a spell of locating then. Not just a reverse summoning, which was what he mapped out, bit by bit, but another layer of magic on top of that binding his physical form to this place. He had never under his own power crossed the threshold of space and distance. It was not a magic he possessed. The Prophet possessed it somehow. He could not begin to imagine how he had come across it. Not without preparation and time and the damned annoying inconvenience of having the moon just so and the proper ingredients mixed to perfection and the burning incense of blood. Distorting the fabric of space and place was just not that important.

He wiped everything from the desktop and layered it in parchment. Dipped pen in ink and began to transfer the mechanics of the spell, of the chants of the ingredients into more coherent form. He had taken parts from several invocations, from several schools of thought and began to tedious task of twining them into one whole that would serve his purposes. It might do nothing at all, for all he knew. He might be wasting his time in truth, but once he latched onto an idea, he was like a dog with a scrap of bone with it. Refusing to let go until it was gnawed down to nothing.

He personally went and found old Ayntha when he'd finished the greater part of it and forced her to look at his speculation and the method of his madness, using her skill as a practitioner of herb magics to gauge how accurate his concoctions would be. She clicked her tongue, running a gnarled finger over the parchments.

"You weave a complex web here." She observed. "There are simple things that could be substituted --- and would less demanding of the caster."

"Simplicity is not an issue." He said. "There are wards which no simple counter summoning will bypass. Do you think it will work?"

"I think it is as dangerous a crafting as ever I've seen. I think the scope of it is beyond a simple old woman like me."

"Do you think it will work?" He repeated the question, pinning her with his ice blue eyes.

"I think something will happen. How could it not?"

"Then help find what I need for the spell." He thrust a list of ingredients at her. No simple list, certainly. Her old eyes scanned it, then widened in dismay.

"Here -- in the cold north, some of these things may not be available."

"Then use your years of study in herb lore to come up with acceptable substitutes, but be quick about it. The moon is full in two nights hence and I'll not wait another cycle to try this out."

He could not wait another moon cycle, because it would be too late by then. Because by then, the Prophet would have had more than enough time to accomplish what he wanted and it would mean the ruination of them all more than likely when he did.

There was no escape from the morass that pulled him down. He gave up struggling against it, not because it was easier or the pain washed away his will to fight, but because to a certain degree he just didn't care.

Only not caring didn't make the dreams go away. The last one he had, the last one he could remember assaulting him in this place without windows and hope was a skewered, surrealistic version of the truth. He had traveled that path before, step by terrible step and yet there was nothing he could do to avert it. Nothing he could do to force his mind or body to stop the things from happening that happened. Again and again and again.

Miserable, horrible day. Pushed beyond his endurance by the lot of malicious, foul mouthed boys that always plagued him. Hurt by words and fists, until he fought back the best he could, outnumbered and outwitted by older, more treacherous minds. When he drew blood against them, it drove them into a frenzy and in the dream, as in reality, he had thought they were going to kill him in their rage. And something that he had little control over had surged to the surface and stricken them down. Horribly killed them, the sons of the village's upstanding citizens. And he had been taken, dazed and bewildered by what he had done to stand before the judgment of the town's elders. Of his grandfather. His mother had been a silent witness. She had looked upon it all with mournful eyes, but she hadn't shed a tear. He hadn't until they decreed that they didn't quite know what to do with him. Until they decided to lock him away in the only sanctified place they knew that might contain the evil of his soul. The old church at the edge of the river, half flooded by the crumbling of the shore. Decreed that there he would stay until he died of starvation. He had cried then. But more because his mother could hardly stand to meet his eye when he screamed for her to comfort him. He hardly understood what the banishment meant, in his mind the only punishment they gave him was separation from Mother and she hardly seemed to notice when they took him away.

The priest did. That was the only thing different in the dream. The new priest watched them drag him off with simmering, accusing eyes and a small smile on his thin lips. There was a promise in that smile that Kall did not know how to interpret. So he didn't think about it. All he could think about was the ruined, boarded up interior of the old church that he was thrust into. The slanted floor that dipped towards the encroaching river. The walls coated with mildew and algae. The pews mostly ripped up from the floor to use in the new church, but a few broken seats remaining. The naive was almost submerged. A few statues that had crashed down when the foundation finally gave lay shattered on floor. The one window that had not been boarded was the round, stained glass one above the naive. It let in a tainted, greenish light. A lapping pool of brown water took up the far end of the church. The smell of stagnation was strong in the air.

He whimpered when they slammed the doors behind him. When he heard the crash of the bar and the sound of them nailing it into place. Finality. Something rustled in the debris near the water. Snakes that had slithered in through the cracks to find a quiet, dark place to nest, he thought with a shiver of fear. He sat with his back against the door, desperately wishing that mother would come. He needed her soothing voice and the comfort of her arms so badly.

But no, when she came, a detached part of him insisted, the nightmare would truly begin. That part of him dreaded her appearance. The other part of him, the part that walked consciously in the dream had no choice but to yearn her presence. He went to sleep eventually, curled by the door, and dreamt of snakes crawling out to see what had invaded their domain. Snakes and a dull, throbbing pain that ate through his back to the core of his being. Of hurtful pressure in his shoulders and arms and a seeping numbness in his hands and wrists that would not go away. He came half awake to confusion. His back to a wall, his weight supported by manacles that cut his wrists to the bone. He sobbed, trying to take his weight onto his legs, but the movement grated his back against the wall. It thrust him back into darkness.

And he awoke to the sound of not snakes but rats scurrying across the floor by his legs. He cried out and flailed at them and they scampered, intimidated by his size and the sudden waking furor. The dream scared him. He rubbed his wrists and climbed unsteadily to his feet. It was unclear to him how long he had been here. His legs were weak. With hunger? He could not recall eating in a very long time. He walked down the wrecked, tilted aisle towards the edge of the water, wondering if it were drinkable. The smell warned him away. It was fouled by stagnation. His throat ached from crying -- screaming? He backed against on of the fallen statues and leaned there, praying to the gods for salvation. For forgiveness. But they turned a deaf ear.

And then, when the oppressive silence of the drowning church weighed so heavily upon him that he slept again his prayers were answered and she came.

Part of him panicked. The buried, helpless part that could only watch this dream from a distance. That part of him sobbed, even while the child caught his breath in boundless relief that she had come. That she had not abandoned him after all. The other part of him wanted to wake up so badly even the endless pain of that other existence would be welcome. Anything to avoid this scene from being played.

But he couldn't. He sat up, with tears of gratitude spilling down his face and watched her shadowed figure move up the aisle. Watched the gentle sway of her skirts, the movement of her long hair as she put a hand out on the back of one shattered pew to steady herself. The other hand she held behind her back. Her eyes were in shadow. She said nothing.

He said her name, tentatively. Held out a hand to her, confused by the silence and the unsteady gait. As if she were sick or unwilling to approach him. She had seen what he'd done. Was she disgusted? Did she hate him for it?

He wept that he was sorry. Pledged that he would never do it again. He hadn't meant to!! She stared down at him, face frozen and impassive.

"It is my fault." She said. "My sin. You never should have been born."

Part of him stared with incomprehension, another part of him wailed to hear those words because he knew them to be true.

"I'll burn in hell because of your existence." She said and swung her hand out from behind her, clutching the gleaming curved length of the Falchion. There was nothing he could or would do but stare as she brought it two handed down upon his head.

It didn't hurt, surprisingly enough. Just drove him to his knees, and blinded him with blood streaming into his eyes. She stumbled back, begging for the gods to forgive her. To save her soul from the taint of having let him live so long. And the power that dwelled within him coiled and ripped out of its bonds, lashing out into the solid world of reality, ripping into the living flesh that had killed him. Tore her body to sheds as if she were nothing more than unconnected flesh and muscle without the benefit of a skin to keep it together.

The Falchion hit the floor. The power caught him in its grip and repaired the damage done without him ever being aware of the intricacy of the task. It was a living, malevolent thing that took control of its vessel when the vessel could not summon the will or rational to move on his own. All he could do was stare at the bloodied, ravaged corpse of his mother. He bent down numbly and picked up the blade she had used to destroy him. It was large in his small fingers. Blood made the hilt sticky in his grip. The doors were closed, locked behind Mother so she could do her duty. The powers gathered to blast them open, to blast all of their self-righteous faces into the same bloody pulp it had made of mother.

In reality it had happened. In the dream something was altered. The new priest stepped into the path of the greenish light from the stained glass window. There was in the priest's eyes a gleaming inferno of triumph. His lips stretched in satisfaction.

"Look what you've done, wretched creature."

Kall screamed and wanted this man dead so bad he felt it consume his reason, his memory, every physical sensation in his body. The power responded, it welled up in a wave of hate and guilt and devastation and crashed down upon the Priest. And the priest lifted a hand and batted it aside. Lifted the other and closed the fingers like a fist and clamped down upon the source of it, obliterating it as easily as he might squash an ant underneath his thumb.

He stared in dismay, the fury that the power had summoned within him dwindling away to nothing now that it was gone. All he could see now was the inescapable walls of the drowned church, the desecrated body of Mother and the man that hunted him. The man that would finish what his mother had not been able to accomplish.

He took a step backwards, trembling so hard he had to clutch his hands to hold them still. The priest smiled. A feral, animal smile that promised nothing but hurt and death.

"She was the last. The last of anyone who ever wanted to help you. And look what you did to her. What punishment a matricide?" The priest slithered towards him, a snake in godly vestments. He bent and picked up the blade. Ran his fingers down the length of the blade, then licked the blood from them.

"The taste of your blood is sweet, boy."

The child scrambled to get away, mindless panic in his huge eyes. Over the charred corpse of his mother and he sobbed hysterically. The priest circled him, pacing his awkward flight, holding that bloody blade in his hand. He pointed it at Kall and said between breaths that were becoming labored in his agitation. "There's no way out for you now. Different ending this time, my pretty, pretty little monster."

"Nonononono." He moaned and curled against the splintered remains of an old statue. No place to run in this drowned place. No place to hide from those mad, gleaming eyes and that grin that dripped saliva with its owner's fervor. The priest raised the sword and slammed it down over Kall's head. He whimpered and covered his face with his hands. The blade sunk into the stone of the statue and quivered there. The priest reached down for him ---

-----Slash! The lash crossed his skin and took all his breath away. His eyes stared blindly at the gray wall before his face. He could see the drowned church so clearly in his mind that he almost believed he was there. Almost, save for the crack of the arcane lash that ripped his flesh to shreds. She was dead. She was dead. She was dead. And he'd sent her to hell. The demons had devoured her soul. Taken her to eternal torment and all because of him. From his birth to his living, to his evil, betraying magic that had taken her life, when his was the one that should have ended. Worthless, this life, if it had cost so much. He wanted to die. He wanted so badly to die and take the coward's way out ---

--- and the priest crowed in victory, caught at his pale hair and the collar of his tunic and jerked his small body up from against the statue, glaring into his grief and fear etched face. "You will. You will, boy. But not yet."

He tried frantically to twist away and the tunic ripped. He slithered out of it and the priest pounced on him, slammed him down into the rubble littered floor and sought to restrain his twisting, writhing body. Caught his wrists and pinned them over his head and crouched over him, shaking with a maniacal light in his eyes while he ran his free hand down Kall's narrow chest. "Pretty, pretty monster."

Madness in the priest's eyes -- and something more that the boy could not comprehend -- but froze him with terror nonetheless ---

-- The lash stopped and the echoes of the nightmare, delusion, fever dream, blended with reality. Angelo's hands ran down the bloody mess of his back. The man's breathing was harsher than his own. Fingers caught in his hair, pulled his head back and the blood coated hand smeared a line of crimson down the side of his cheek to his neck. He couldn't think, couldn't reason. Couldn't do anything but pulse with the hurt and wish over and over that it would end forever. Death was the only escape from this.

"Sinner. Sinner. Sinner." Angelo hissed in his ear. "You even try to taint me with your wretchedness. But you're almost there, aren't you. Almost mine."

He sobbed, not even having a voice to beg for death. The Prophet's lips pressed against his jaw, his tongue flicked out to lick the blood away, his hands moved around his ribs to trail down the muscles of his stomach. Horrified trembling shook him, mind balking in revulsion and horror at what he had seen in Angelo's eyes and heard in his voice. One last overpowering shame to destroy him. Ridged, punishing flesh pressed against him and he couldn't even find the breath within his lungs to scream for it to stop ---

--- The child screamed. And screamed. And the priest hit him repeatedly to quiet them, damning him to hell for his sins. Damning him for making the priest fall into sin himself. All the while he hurt him, he blamed it on the child for tempting him into it. Demanded that the child admit it was so. Hadn't his poor dead mother said as much when she'd tried to rectify her own sin and died by the hand of her son? The priest was a holy man, a good man and look how he had been tainted by the evil in Kall's soul. And the child lay with his face pressed into the rubble and begged for forgiveness, because it was the only way he knew to make it stop. Because he knew, deep down in his soul that the priest was right. That he was the cause of all the bad and horrible things that had happened in his small world and he wanted to die for it ---

--"Damn you to hell." Angelo screamed in his ear, spittle hitting his neck, cheek. "You make me do this, demonspawn. Say it! Say it!"

He couldn't get the blood and the tears out of his mouth. The child in the drowned church screamed in bewilderment and shame, desperate to say anything to make it stop.

"I made you. I made you do it."

"Repent, sinner." Tearing. Ripping, pain that ate at the core of him. That shredded the last vestiges of armor that had protected what was left of pride and honor and vitality.

"REPENT!" Angelo screeched.

"I'm sorry. I'msorrysorrysorry." He couldn't say it enough. It echoed in his mind until it was all he could think and see and feel. Pain and guilt. Guilt and pain. And he hardly even felt the pain in the spinning, detached place he retreated to. The man curled into that place and closed himself from the world, mortally wounded. And the child, as children are wont to do being less brittle and fixed than adults, took up residence, huddled in a corner of a church so long gone as to be forgotten, crying over the hurt done to his body and the ravaged corpse of his mother.

The Master summoned her. She crept into his chambers hesitantly, lyre clutched in her hand while he paced, muttering incoherently to himself. There was such a look in his eyes, they boiled with such -- unease, that she almost bolted. But to not appear at his command would be suicidal. So she slipped into the room and knelt where he could see her if he wanted, waiting. There was blood on his hands. Her eyes caught it in one of her hesitant glances up at him and she caught her breath on a surge of dread of what he had done to draw it. What he had done to cause himself such apparent anguish.

He whirled to her, as if he had just spotted her after she had sat there for five minutes awaiting his pleasure.

"Sing the scripture I taught you. The one asking for atonement."

She brought the instrument to her thighs, positioned her fingers to strum the simple chords and sang the hymn. More a reverberation of appeal to the holy gods, words of redemption clothed in the shards of humbleness to ease the guilt of the righteous. She sang it and he mouthed the words with her, calming himself. He went to the alter and symbol of his god and dropped to his knees, breaking with the hymn and offering up his own prayers of redemption. He shrugged his shoulders out of the loose neck of his robes, then pulled off the tunic underneath. Lily stared in shock, faltering in the hymn. She had never seen the master without his robes. His body was stringy and rawboned, despite the breadth of his shoulders. White, dead looking skin.

He reached for a short handled, leather whip and she shuddered, a dozen fears going through her mind. But he seemed to have forgotten her entirely. With slow, savage intensity he brought the whip down across his own shoulder, leaving a red welt.

"Forgive me, God, my transgression." He gritted out and hit himself again.

"Forgive me my weakness." Again.

Lily clutched the lyre to her chest, inching back towards the wall. The slap of leather against flesh was mesmerizing. Blood leaked down from the welts in tiny rivulets, scarlet against his white skin. He never cried out or even grimaced. As if he longed for the pain, for the redemption his own flogging would bring. As if such a simple thing ever could redeem him of the things he had done.

"Forgive me to succumbing to his foul temptation. I am unworthy to serve You." Slap, slap, slap.

"Cleanse the filth from my mind. Forgive me my trespass."

She covered her face, shutting out the sight of him, but not the sound of the whip or the madness in his voice. What had he done? What had he done to drive him to such guilt? Fear pulled at her ruthlessly. A chilling, empty fear that made her chest pound and her head spin. On her rump, with one hand holding the lyre and the other on the floor to support her, she slipped to the door. Crawled backwards out of it and even out of his personal chamber could not find the strength to gain her feet. So she crawled to the outer door and only climbed to her feet outside it, her shoulder shored up by the wall, her teeth chattering so hard she bit her tongue and tasted blood.

She ran down the hall then, her bare feet a soft patter on the floor. To the door a floor down from this one from where she knew the Master had come. She expected it to be locked. It had been the last week, but it stood half open, as if the Master had been in too much of a rush to shut it properly. She hesitated on the other side, her back pressed against the stone jamb, fearing to go in and see what the darkness and the silence hid.

She had no right here. She had no right meddling in her master's affairs. She was nothing but a slave and slaves had no business with anything not of their owner's choosing. She would get in trouble leaving the Master's rooms without his permission. She slipped into the cell. The door let in enough light for her to see him against the wall. She gasped and tears began in earnest down her cheeks. The blood was not an unfamiliar sight, nor the wounds of his flesh, but he hung from cruel manacles like he was dead. She didn't know that he wasn't. The only thing that made her hesitate in touching him was her own fears of inadequacies. Her own self-assurance that she had not right to lay fingers upon him. But she pushed those aside and pressed her fingers against his neck to see if a pulse beat there.

It did. She tried to shore up his weight, reckless now that she had committed to him and this madness, and reach the cuffs that imprisoned his bleeding wrists. She could barely reach them with her finger tips when she stood on tip toe, much less trying to hold him up at the same time. She murmured a curse under her breath, trying to think how she might get him down and came up stymied. She hadn't the key anyway. Stupid, stupid slave girl, she called herself and bit down on the side of her mouth to stifle a sound of despair.

The sound of boots in the hallway outside made her freeze. For one second she stood frozen beside him, trapped with no way out that would not be seen by whoever walked that hall. Then she darted for the cot and shimmied under it, pressing against the wall in fear of discovery. She could just see the faint light made by the door. Beside, it lying in the dirty straw of the floor was her lyre. Her breath stopped in her throat. She was lost, surely. The door swung wide open and she saw black boots. No acolyte then, for they all went bare of foot with long robes covering their ungodly flesh. Not even the Master, for he too wore robes. Which meant it was the master's shadow. Sinakha.

He paused at the door and stood for a moment, unmoving. Had he seen her lyre? Was he even now searching the cell with his strange green eyes for her? He stepped forward, strode towards the wall and Kall-Su. There was the sound of metal grating against metal. A body slumped bonelessly to the floor. She could see him sprawled there, a glint of pale gold hair, pale skin amidst the blood and lashmarks. Sinakha crouched, pulled him up as if it were no effort at all and dumped him ungracefully on the cot. It groaned in protest of the sudden weight and Lily shut her eyes, fearing it would come crashing down upon her. Then Sinakha turned and walked out of the cell, not seeming to see her lyre at all. He was out the door and for a moment her head swam giddily with her narrow escape before he shut the door behind him and she heard the rusty grate of key in lock.

She wanted to moan. She kept it back. The cell was plunged into darkness. The only sounds were the faint rustle of his breathing. Hers was a silent, fearful trickle of breath. She stayed where she was for a long while, imagining Sinakha would realize something was amiss and come back. But nothing disturbed the endless dark, stillness. Eventually she scooted out from under the cot, feeling her way to the edge and his body that lay so quietly upon it. Her fingers found an arm. Ran up his shoulder to touch his face, to brush at his hair.

"Are you there?" she whispered. "Please wake up."

He made no response. No slightest tremor to suggest he lingered anywhere near consciousness. She rocked back and forth, trapped in this darkness with him. A few breaths to calm herself and she made her way to the door, tested its strength and found it resolute. Softly she hit her forehead against the wood. They would find her here, where she was not supposed to be and the master would be furious. She didn't know if her worth to him was enough to make the punishment survivable. He could find other minstrels surely. She slid down the door, searching in the darkness for her lute. Found it and hugged it to herself. It made a hollow thrumming sound, almost a complaint when she squeeze it tight. She had sealed her own fate by having concern for a man she had no power to help.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath46.htm



	46. Chapter 46

aftermath46

Forty-six

The darkness overwhelmed her and ate at her spirit, so she sang to comfort herself. She curled in the nook between the head of the cot and the cold stone wall and softly caressed the strings of the lyre, whispering the words of a song she remembered as a child. Odd, how the simple songs she recalled her mother singing to her before her freedom had been stripped away from her were more soothing than all the elegant and courtly tunes she had been taught to play during her life as a slave. The song was about cherry trees and children stealing fruit and laughingly taunting the orchid growers as he pursued them for their theft. She had never seen a cherry tree. She had tasted them once, when she had belonged to the wealthy landowner. He had often been benevolent and given her scraps from the lord's table. Scraps from his table and the full measure of his licentiousness when he had her alone after dinner, while his lady wife prayed in the chapel to wash away all her earthly sins. Only the wealthy had the ear of god. Lily had never imagined that one like her might be worth of such bounty.

The sound of Kall-Su's breathing never faltered. Never altered, hinting that he might be close to awareness. He was a shape in the darkness that held no spark of energy that she could sense. A life that pulsed near her, but that held no will or spirit. It was disconcerting. It made her feel so dreadfully alone, to sit so close by and yet sense no aura. She had to reach out and touch him every once and a while to reassure herself that she was not alone. His skin was warm to the touch, fevered, she thought, but so smooth under her fingers. She felt like a thief in the orchard for prolonging the contact, but she had never felt skin as soft as his on a man grown. Like that of a child -- or an unattainable angel from the heavens. It made her gut clench to think what the master had done to mar it.

The master said she had magic in her. In the melody of her song. She wished she did in truth, even though the notion scared her, for she would surely use to it soothe his wounds -- or at the very least out of this cell. Absently, she stroked the fingers of one limp hand curled by his head and wondered what he had been before this. Before the Master had decided he needed him shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. She had visions of wealth and power, because to the last he held himself with the grace of bearing that only men of power possessed. She wondered what it would have been like to be owned by him. Then shook her head, banishing where her thoughts led from there. Slaves were things to be used and discarded and she could not bear the thought of that, even in fantasy. One never, never grew attached to one's owner, for sooner or later, the one master would be exchanged for another.

She slept, with head pillowed on arm on the edge of the cot and woke to the muffled sound of footsteps echoing outside the door, coming down the hall. She stuffed the lyre under the cot and slipped into the scant shelter herself, pressing fists to chest and biting her bottom lip in fear. The sound of key in lock. The squeak of hinges as the door was pushed open. The swish of robes and the hard tamp of a staff hitting the stone floor. She squinted out from beneath her lashes to see the hem of white robes and beside them polished black boots. The master and his shadow. The master stepped close. Shifted slightly to lay a hand perhaps on his sleeping victim. A long moment passed where no one moved. Lily dared not breath.

Then the master straightened and said with a tight inflection of anticipation in his voice. "He's ready. There will be no opposition when I take possession. But I will not wake within a marred host."

Another silence and this time she felt the stirring scent of power curling about the room. She felt it coil carefully and meticulously in the air above her and knew, without knowing how she knew, that a healing of sorts was taking place. The master was repairing the damage he had gone to such lengths to inflict. She could not for the life of her imagine why.

Then it was gone and the master turned without speaking another word and strode from the cell. His shadow stepped close to the cot, bent down and with a grunt of effort lifted Kall-Su from it. Dust settled down into her face from the shift in weight. She blinked her eyes furiously to dislodge it. They were gone by the time she'd cleared the grits from her eyes, leaving the cell door ajar and the room empty save for herself and whatever crawling insects had occupied it before she came. She lay under the cot, shaking from reaction, from the miracle that she had not been caught. That she could slip out now unnoticed with none the wiser. But the master's words rang ominously through her mind.

_I will not wake within a marred host. No opposition when I take possession? _They had broken him. Scarred his beautiful skin, then healed him at a whim. For what? She shivered to even imagine the master's dark thoughts. His reasons within reasons that no common slavegirl could fathom. But it all revolved about him. About Kall-Su, who she thought was as ignorant of the master's machinations as she was.

She slipped from under the cot, hugging the lyre to her chest. She ought to run down the hall and cower as far from where the master was as possible. She ought to remember what she was and what place she held here, but her bare feet touched the stone in the direction the master and his shadow had gone. Her ears could just make out the sound of boots slapping against the floor. If she didn't follow them to see what they were about, it would gnaw at her forever. Even if she held no power here, she had a mind and a will to know, even if the knowledge would haunt her, what the master had planned for Kall-Su.

The point of the anointed blade sliced cleanly into the flesh of Schneider's wrist. He sank it deeply, wincing slightly at the sting, cutting through the large veins that pulsed under the translucent skin. The winds attacked him, high atop the tower of Sta-Veron Castle, whipping silver hair into his eyes and mouth, blinding him now and again as he watched the crimson well like a font from his wrist. He was simply dressed for the preparation. Black sleeveless tunic and trousers, bare feet that had grown so numb from the cold stone that he barely felt them. A warming spell would be inappropriate at the moment, so he endured the discomfort. He saw the pattern in his mind. A glowing circle with a five pointed star within it. He held his wrist over the stone and let the blood drip down, softly chanting the lines of an incantation as he made the circuit full circle, creating the symbol from the most potent ingredient available. His own life's blood. He made the first slash of the star, crossed its tip with the line of the circle and carefully walked the breadth of the circle to create the second line. A touch of dizziness assaulted him and he used a small bit of magic to shore up the strength the blood loss took from him. He couldn't replenish himself yet, because the symbol had to be made from his sacrifice. He hated -- hated with a passion, this sort of magic. But what choice was left, when all his other methods were exhausted?

He finished the symbol and sealed the rent in his wrist with a touch of finger tips to skin. Went and knelt in the center of the circle and finished chanting the invocation, feeling the stirring of sibilant and indistinct powers that were attracted to the sacrifice, drawn by the incantation. Bound by the symbol. It would have been easier to bind them with his own will, but then they wouldn't be able to perform the tasks he wanted of them. The symbol glowed faintly in the night. The moon was almost at its zenith above him. He sighed and relaxed, reflexively rubbing the wrist he had cut.

One layer done. Now for the second.

Lily slid among the shadows, following the sound of footsteps in a vast emptiness. Up one level and the next, to halls that were dust shrouded and devoid of life. No one ever came up here. No one disturbed the solitude of these higher level halls. In all her wonderings she had never come up here, fearing perhaps the omens that kept all the other residents of the place without windows from these deserted pathways.

She had abandoned the lyre some ways back, afraid some slip of her hand might cause it to vibrate with sound. There was a door ahead which the master and his shadow had passed through. Hesitantly she peeked around the edge of the portal and looked into a room that dwarfed any she had seen in this place. The walls rose high enough that the ceiling was hidden in darkness. It was a cylindrical chamber, from the floor of which rose a circular pillar the width of several houses lumped together. A stair jutted out from the sides, winding round the pillar until they reached the top, which was some forty feet above the floor. There were columns surrounding the edge of the pilaster that might have rose to the ceiling. It was hard to see. Torches guttered on the inside face of each column, casting it in an orange glow, while the rest of the mammoth chamber resided in shadow.

They began climbing the steps. Disappeared around the back of the pylon and then appearing again as they reached the top. She could hardly hazard a guess what waited on top. They were no longer visible to her. She shored up her courage and darted across the space separating the door and the foot of the stairs. They couldn't see her unless they came to the edge and looked down. She set her foot on the bottom step and climbed, too far into this to run now.

Hundreds of steps. Almost at the top and the beat of her heart was so palpable that her head hurt from it. At the top and she crouched, her head level with the top of the pilaster. Carefully she lifted her eyes above the surface and looked.

There was a great stone cross sat above a broad alter in the center of the floor. The cross was engraved with runes and symbols, as if it were a religious icon instead of the familiar symbols of the gods she was used to seeing in temples and churches. She had never seen a cross so depicted. But the master knelt before it with clasped hands and prayed in a language she had never heard, while his shadow laid Kall-Su down upon the alter, which was also shaped somewhat like a cross. The Shadow arranged his limbs to conform with the shape of the cross. Arms spread out to either side, legs together down the center. The Shadow whispered a word and touched east wrist. Black fingers seemed to come out of the stone itself, encircling Kall-Su's arms, then his ankles, as if he were likely to jump up and fight them. The Shadow, finished with his duty, went to stand behind the Master, his back to Lily. She could see the end of his sword protruding from his long cloak.

The Master finished his prayers and stood. He walked to the end of the alter and lifted his hands and as if appealing to the silent stone cross he cried out.

"Forgive me, my lord God, but the flesh I am about to take is sullied by the hand of Your enemy. It is a willing sacrifice I make in your name so that I can better rid the lands of the pollution that fouls them."

In the air above his hands a blackness began to form . . . .

The servants trudged up the stairs in a procession, arms loaded with clothes. The spell called for something personal. A lock of hair or a nail clipping would have been ideal, but Kall was so damned fastidious no such sloppy leavings were to be found. The old witch said clothing was the next best thing. So Schneider had Kall's closets emptied, bringing the entire lot of it up here just to be safe. The clothing was back up, he had his prize clutched in his hand, the bloody glove he'd found in the mountains when they had come upon Kall's slaughtered party. Old blood, yes, but blood had great potency despite the fact that it was dried and flaking off of the leather.

A bonfire burned in the center of the pentagram. A ring of polished, round stones encircled it, miraculously keeping its flames from licking out beyond the borders of the ring. Ashes and cinder flew on the wind as material burned. He threw in other ingredients. Circling the flame, ever watchful of its dance, he spoke the words of his carefully constructed and researched spell.

The servants had fled, but others stood outside the boundaries of his blood circle, watching. Arshes and Gara. The old witch and Geo Note, the only people in the castle who were not deathly afraid of what he was doing up here that required blood and the burning of all their master's wardrobe. He felt the potency of the spell. Felt things responding to his summons. He tossed the glove into the fire and watched sparks fly.

"I hate this." He heard Arshes discontent. "I don't trust it."

He did not respond to her fears, too busy listening to the winds that howled around the tower.

"What if this spell takes him someplace he can't return from."

"That's what the blood circle is for." The old witch said. "His blood binds him to this circle. The counter-summons may pull him from this place temporarily, but the blood circle with snap him back."

Arshes had no reply to that. He circled the fire again and saw her face, drawn and worried in the light from the flames. He felt a surge in power. A culmination of forces and drew his breath in expectation.

Gara stepped into the circle.

"No." He said, and Arshes cried at the same time.

"What are you doing?"

"Going with him."

"You will not!" Arshes reached after him and Geo Note caught her shoulder.

"Go back, Gara. He's almost killed you once." Schneider said softly, attention wavering between Gara and the flame.

"No." Gara said simply, broad face set in stubborn lines.

"Then I'm coming." Arshes declared, wrenching free of Geo Note's hand.

"No, Arshes." Schneider snapped. "I need you here, guarding this place. I need you to protect her, Arshes. And protect yourself."

Her eyes spoke volumes. She trembled at the edge of the circle, ears twitching in distress. Her eyes threatened to well over with tears. She looked from him to Gara, then back again.

"Bring him back." She whispered, not taking that step, and Schneider didn't know who she meant, Kall or Gara or Angelo's severed head.

Then the fire went out and with it, it sucked wind and air and breath into the void where it had existed. Schneider blinked and he was thrust into blackness.

He blinked again and he was falling through the night sky with nothing but indistinct blackness below and Gara's startled cry from above. He gasped out the words of a flight spell, caught Gara up in its tendrils and slowed the descent. Mountains below. He made out the sprawling line of ridges and the distant black void of what might have been the ocean. The western mountains then. And below...... Below was nothing. Nothing until he sent a sphere of witch light down to light the way and then he saw the sprawling roof of a blocky, flat surfaced building, built almost like a pyramid save for the tiers and the sprawling flat roof. It thrust out from the side of the mountain like some abnormal growth.

And it felt wrong. It felt as if he ought to be looking at nothing at all, as if his eyes were playing tricks on him and it wasn't there at all. Warded to the teeth then. He gathered power as they dropped, not even bothering with the words of the spell, just summoning the power he wanted and focusing it downward. Downward.

Kall-Su screamed. The blackness the Master had created emitted a high pitched wailing drone. Lily covered her ears, not sure Kall-su were even conscious, but his body was arched on the alter, straining at the bonds, his mouth open in wordless shock. The Master stood before him, body ridged, hands turned into claws that reached out and hovered just over Kall-Su's face.

Tendrils of darkness laced out of the pulsing darkness that had settled just before the master's chest and just over Kall-Su's face, thrusting simultaneously into both bodies. A dozen grasping little spirals of evil that seemed to feed off the both of them. The master seemed almost to draw in upon himself. In the light of magic and torches his hair seemed to silver with age between one breath and the next as though the vitality were leaving his body and flowing into the black cloud. Lily cringed, tears streaming down her face, helpless to do anything but cower on the steps and watch.

And the sky fell down upon her head. With an reverberating thunder clap of sheer, devastating sound the ceiling shattered. White, sizzling energy exploded downward, sheering off the far side of the pillar. Chunks of stone the size of wagons showered down. The column nearest her was hit. It toppled, ripped from its moorings and slammed into the column next to it. She screamed. She couldn't stop herself, but her voice was lost in the cascade of destruction. It was lost to the Master's screams of rage. To the sudden crashing sound of an explosive burst of his own making that he sent ceilingward into the darkness. She closed her eyes against the light. Opened them again to see him launching skyward as if some invisible hand had pulled him up by strings. Another burst of power that jarred her to her bones and the sky lit up. For one moment she could see the ragged outline of the hole made in the ceiling. She could see the night sky beyond and her eyes teared at the sight. Then a man was dropping out of the darkness with a naked sword in hand and the Master's Shadow dashed to meet him, drawing his blade as he ran.

She was afraid to move. Afraid to do anything but stare. The night sky flared as if some dire storm brewed in the clouds above. A chunk of stone fell, glanced off the cross and shattered one of its arms. The whole of the cross teetered and she thought it would fall forward and crush Kall-Su. She dashed forward even as it toppled. But it fell at an angle, hit one of the outlying arms of the alter and shattered. She shoved stone aside, away from his arm and clawed at the black bands circling his wrists. Magic. Magic bindings, she thought frantically. They tingled at the touch. She yanked and pulled but they would not surrender. Sobbing furiously at her own helplessness she sank down next to the alter.

"Wake up." She cried. "Wake up and help me."

But she did not expect a response. The sky shuddered as something vastly powerful burned through the cloud cover. The whole of the sky visible though the gaping hole in the ceiling glowed briefly. The sound of blades clashing resonated through the circular chamber. The fight drew closer to the alter.

Gara's boots touched ground and he rolled with the impact, came up with the Murasume held at ready and his eyes scanning the area for enemies. The enemy was not hard to find. The enemy was rushing him with drawn blade and damned expressionless eyes. He was prepared this time for the strength of Sinakha's blow. He blocked it and let it slide down the length of his own blade, then spun and kicked at the man's ankles. He didn't connect, but he didn't expect to. All he expected was Sinakha to jump to avoid it. He rammed a fist into the man's gut when he did. Sidestepped even as Sinakha shook off the blow and swung at his head with his blade.

A chunk of ceiling crashed down and the both of them leapt out of its path. It gave Gara a split second to take in the battle field on which he stood. A platform with edges falling over into what he could not see. Columns surrounding the circular surface, some of which had toppled when Schneider blasted through the ceiling. Nothing else but a cross in the center and an alter below it. Gara's mouth twisted into a cold smile. He'd actually done it. Schneider and his half-assed hedge witch spell had done it.

Sinakha sailed over the slab of ceiling, slashing down as he passed. Gara lifted his blade to block it, called on the powers of the Murasume and tore a path of destruction across the ground Sinakha would have to land on. The Prophet's captain touched ground and was tossed to the side. He hit a column so hard it splintered. For a heart beat he stood with his back against it, breathing hard, then his sword came up and he smiled. A cold little smile that made Gara grip the hilt of the Murasume tighter and grind his teeth together. He had already ascertained that the man was good. Damned good. But the fact that Sinakha managed to unnerve him made him doubly dangerous.

Gathering power glowed in the air before Sinakha's sword. Then a dozen balls of pure energy hurtled towards Gara. He cried out and slashed the Murasume in an arch over his head. A whirlwind of power rose up before him, absorbing the energy, causing a hundred tiny little zig zags of lightning to flare before his eyes, all of them reaching out to touch the tip of the Murasume. He felt the electric tingle in his fingers. Then it was gone, along with the magic and the two of them were left facing each other with plain steel again.

Schneider didn't get a chance to see what lay below the section of roof he had demolished. A bolt of high power energy lanced up out of the depths, almost as if had been a backlash of his own strike and seared the air in which he floated. He lost his hold on Gara, he was taken so off guard. Then there was a screaming, force shield surrounded banshee rocketing up towards him and he forgot about the ninja master altogether. He put up a shield in time to take the brunt of the impact but it still slammed him back a good hundred feet. By then he had recognized Angelo's face. He let out an inarticulate cry of his own, drew in power with a frenzy and released it in the biggest lightning blast he could summon on such short order.

It bounded across Angelo's shields. The skies rumbled in response to the energy released within them. Angelo disappeared into the ominous clouds over head and with a snarl Schneider was after him. The Prophet would not escape him again.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath47.htm



	47. Chapter 47

aftermath47

Forty-seven

He had him. Schneider finally had Angelo within his sights and the damned murdering coward dove into the clouds to cover his escape. Vengeance marred the clarity of his thoughts. It made his vision tunnel and his head pound for the wanting of it. All he could think of was Angelo's death screams. Angelo's total destruction and even that wouldn't be enough to satisfy the churning need for retaliation eating at Schneider's soul.

A sizzling wash of destructive power crashed down on him from above. His shields ate up the majority of it, but some of it got through. He felt the shock along the right side of his body, felt clothing char and skin burn. He did not waste the time in a healing, just fired back a damned powerful Strike spell he'd been building the entire flight up here. The clouds lit up with the scattered energy. For a brief moment he saw his foe, shields blazing with the power Angelo sought to deflect. Then it was dark again; the Prophet concealed by the clouds.

"You can't hide forever!" he screamed into the swirling mists. The clouds opened up above him. A humming aura of light came into being over his head. He recognized the scent of the spell. Angelo had used it on the battlefield at the foot of the western mountains months ago. He put effort into strengthening his shields, since there was no time to escape the thing and it slammed down like the avenging fist of Angelo's god. It hammered him down into the side of a mountain. Trees splintered and earth exploded outwards at the impact. Half the mountain side was razed from the backlash of power.

Fine. Fine, he thought, half buried in dirt and savaged trees. If this was too easy it would not hold as much satisfaction. He let his shields falter, using that energy to repair the damage the fall had done him. Something came out of the darkness of the shattered forest at him. A great, lumbering beast that seemed to have been constructed of earth and trees and rock. It opened its maw and roared soundlessly at him. It reminded him vaguely of the giant in the great forest, with the height and the mindless expression on what passed for its face. But it was bigger and not hampered with the weakness of mortal flesh.

Still lying on his back in the crater his shield had made of the mountain side he lifted a hand, fingers splayed and hissed a word. Exodus. The thing exploded backwards, shards of it flying in every direction. Rock pelted his body. He didn't bother with a shield, just held up an arm to protect his face from the shrapnel. Then with a grunt of effort he stood up, shaking dirt from his hair; staring up into the night sky.

"Is that the best you can do? After subsuming the powers of how many wizards? You're pitiful. Its a wonder your god can even stand to tolerate your existence."

A wisp of wind and Angelo hovered at the tree tops. An Exodus spell with every bit as much power as the one Schneider had just employed smashed into him. He was pummeled back into the earth he'd just risen from. Flesh and clothing was torn. His hair was singed. He felt a copious stream of blood running down from his scalp, and blinked it out of his eyes. That was two in a row. Angelo's luck was getting damned annoying.

"Don't you dare defile the name of my god with your serpent's lips."

"Which god is that, Angelino? The One God you're pushing down people's throats here; the Christian one you worshipped in the old world; or Ansasla? Do you even know anymore?"

"Shut up, Demon!!" A blast of fire based energy scoured the earth where Schneider had been. He leapt out of the path, taking to the air and firing back a blast of his own. In the Prophet's frenzy it caught him with shields down and blew him backwards, ripping through robes and skin. The trees caught at his body. He righted himself, holding a hand to a gash in his stomach that leaked blood and the glistening roll of intestines. His eyes bled red, but his face still held that half mad, fanatical indignation. But it seemed older now than it had the last time Schneider had seen him. As if all the power he used was eating up at the mortal flesh he wore, draining it of vitality. It might very well be the case. If a mortal body, designed to contain only so much power was overfilled, then the vessel would eventually break. The power of umpteen wizards could not be contained in one mortal shell, which was why Angelo was so desperate to find a host that was not mortal. That could contain the powers he had stolen. But it was too late, because this body was already failing.

Schneider threw back his head and laughed, hovering fifty feet from Angelo. "You're falling to pieces, old man. You couldn't get me and you didn't get Kall-Su and now your mortal body is betraying you. This is so perfect. Payback is hell, isn't it? I don't even need to kill you. It'd almost be more fun to watch your own power eat you up. Almost."

"Your depraved rantings do not effect me." Angelo hissed. The flesh between his fingers sealed itself. He closed his eyes, then screamed an inarticulate string of words. The ground exploded upwards to engulf the both of them. Schneider threw up a shield, but he was still blinded and buffeted by the use of earth magic. When it was over and the last bit of debris settled back to the ground, Angelo was gone.

Gara took a cut to the back of his arm. He launched into the air when Sinakha fired a spray of energy at him, connected with a column and rebounded off it, curling his body into a tight ball to avoid the deadly blasts coming his way. Even as he landed he was calling upon the Murasume's power. He hit ground and let the blade release it's destructive force. Unfortunately Sinakha leapt out of the way and the wave of power sailed uselessly past and hit the wall on the other side of the chamber. A strange thing happened. Instead of shattering stone with the impact, the magic seemed to spread out, skittering along the joints of mortar that held the stones in place before it harmlessly dispersed.

Odd. Very odd. He stared a half second too long and Sinakha was upon him. Clang. Spark. Clash. Blades met and danced off one another.

He took a slice along the upper thigh. He grunted, the leg giving out and went down. Sinakha kicked at his sword hand. His boot connected with Gara's wrist and the Murasume went flying. He cried out in rage. Sinakha's lips turned up in a parody of a smile. He drove forward and the tip of his blade pierced flesh. It would have driven through Gara's heart if he hadn't twisted. It went through his shoulder instead and he let it slide in, pushed himself forward to meet the thrust and trap the blade as he triggered the release of a dagger in his sleeve and rammed it up under Sinakha's ribcage. With a wrench of his hand he twisted the blade, driving it deeper. Hot blood spilled over his fingers. Sinakha's grin faltered, gave out entirely as blood filled his mouth. Those expressionless green eyes widened and suddenly filled with earnest surprise.

He staggered, stumbled forward onto Gara. The fall forced the blade embedded in Gara's shoulder to slice upwards, grating against bone. Gara screamed, falling backwards, Sinakha's dead weight pinning him down. His vision turned gray and for a moment he couldn't see.

"Wake up!" Lily's scream was dwarfed by a shuddering burst of magic from across the pillion where the two men fought. She didn't expect to see his lashes flutter. Didn't expect to see those incredibly blue eyes hazily focus on her. She leaned across the alter, grateful and frightened all at once.

"I can't get you free. How do I get you free of these?" she cried. She tugged frantically at the band on his left wrist. His gaze lazily drifted down his arm to where her fingers grasped the magic band. She had seen his eyes only a few times, not nearly enough to know the range of his expression, but she knew -- she knew in her heart that something was missing from them now. There was deadness behind his gaze. An emptiness that she was not even certain her voice or her panic pierced. Whatever he had been -- he was not the same now.

She wailed in dismay, in frustration and tugged backwards with all her strength on the bond. Something gave. Something tingled through her arms and fingers and enveloped the thin black restraint. It dissolved as if it had been nothing but sand to begin with, scattering about his wrist on the alter top. She gasped in amazement. She was too fearful to question what she had done, if she did, she might not be able to do it again. But she did. Twice more. Then she dragged him off of the alter. He was mostly dead weight in her arms and she went down under him, the both of them sprawled in the rubble at the base of the alter. She struggled to get from under him. How was she to ever get him out of here and down those narrow stairs if he would not support himself?

"Please, please." She pulled him up into her arms and pleaded against his ear. "You've got to help me with this. I can't do it by myself."

A cry of profound pain echoed from the other side of the alter. She shuddered, tightening her arms around Kall-Su. He shifted against her. A hand moved weakly to clutch at her shoulder. She did not hesitate and waste the moment. A shoulder under his arm and all her strength to hoist him upright. He had no balance. His head drooped, brushing against hers. I can't hold him. I'm going to fall, she thought.

Then something flashed down before her eyes, like a veil being lowered. A bloody, white veil, shredded beyond recognition that shrouded the figure of the Master. She caught one brief glance of his eyes. Bleeding and mad, before he swiped an arm at them and she was flung aside with no more thought than if he had flicked a mosquito off of his arm. She tumbled towards the edge of the pillion and went over the side. In her frantic mind she pictured herself falling to her death on the floor below. But her body hit much sooner than expected. Glanced off stairs and rolled a few painful yards down, before she managed to break the fall. Her nails bled from clutching at stone. Her head swam from too many impacts. She rolled to her back and felt ribs shift. As her vision swam out of focus, she thought she saw something flare in the gaping hole that had been made of the ceiling. She blinked back tears -- or blood to better see. An angel, she thought dizzily. A silver haired, glowing angel. But not one of the benevolent kinds she mused. This one had more the look of brimstone and fire. Then she passed out.

The Prophet, even in his madness was a creature of cunning and machination. He had not been prepared for this. In no way had he expected this encounter so soon. He had known his mortal body was failing him. He had hoped to have a new immortal one before he faced his enemy. And he had been so close. So fatefully close to that end.

His enemy was infused with the power of the hell that spawned him. He wouldn't succumb to the spells that would have devastated any other sorcerer. As much stubbornness as hell gifted power, but it spelled the same thing regardless. The Prophet could not best him taken unawares and unprepared. He needed time and he needed his chosen host.

Bloody and in more pain than he could easily recall enduring, he fled back to the place without windows. There were, hidden deep within its bowels places that magic would not dare. Places that even his own powers would not function. Not his magical ones at any rate. He needed to go to ground and lick his wounds, but not without his prize.

He saw an amazing thing. His little slavegirl struggling to support a listing Kall-Su towards the stairs. He did not even waste the breath to condemn her for her sins. Just batted her aside and swept Kall-Su into his embrace when his knees started to buckle. He took a moment to delve into his mind, making certain the defenses were still down, all his carefully crafted fears still in place. Anything could happen now. Angelo was no fool, having survived as long as he had, to assume fate would swing his way merely because he wished it so. He needed to know that even if he lost possession of the Ice Lord now, that he could reclaim him later.

Winds howled down through the hole in the roof. He looked up, eyes narrowing as his enemy descended, hair and clothing whipping about him in the tumult of his making. Angelo tightened his hold on Kall-Su, a living shield that he could not afford to lose now.

"Let him go." His enemy did not quite touch feet to ground, but hovered a foot or so off the floor, power radiating from him in heat waves that made the very air shimmer. Angelo did not bother to waste his power constructing a shield, because any blow Schneider threw at him would hit what he cherished.

"I don't think so. I've gone to so much trouble to make him mine, to abandon him now would be sacrilegious." He trailed a hand up Kall-Su's chest, across his throat to tilt his head backwards. It rested against his shoulder with no resistance. Thick, dark lashes lay against pale cheeks. Angelo pressed his lips against his temple.

"He's so very lovely. I don't recall ever taking a body so beautiful. If his soul was not so tainted by evil, I might have felt sinful in the breaking of it." His eyes glittered as he saw the rage build on his enemy's face. He knew what would drive Schneider to irrationality. And with irrationality he would make mistakes.

"Get your hands off him." Power gathered in a pulsing, blinding orb before Schneider. He formed it with his hands, threatening. But Angelo knew he wouldn't hurl it. Not yet.

"Would you kill the both of us? I promise you he'll go first. I can make certain of that. I can make certain no power of yours will ever resurrect him. You know I'm capable of that."

"You're going to die and when you do you're going to find out just what place hell has for pretenders of faith."

Angelo lifted a brow, felt blood dripping down into his eye and wiped it off against Kall-Su's hair, bright red against palest gold. He reached sinuous mental fingers out to weave among the wards of this place. Wards he had meticulously built and layered and crafted over the centuries. Wards that he had constructed to rebuff any magic but his own, to prison any wizard other than himself. And being a creature that planed for every eventuality, he had made them wards that would destroy this place and all within it, if the need ever arose. Only what rested below, the heart of his warren, would survive. That place had survived even the destruction of the old world, that place had been his haven while the rest of humanity suffered and died.

He sparked something within them, sent them out of their dormancy. Schneider sensed it. His head tilted to the side, like a dog on the scent.

"He screams so very well." Angelo ran a thumb down to the hollow of Kall-Su's throat. "He pleaded for redemption at the last. The god might very well have heard."

It distracted Schneider enough to get his attention away from the wards.

"Get -- your -- hands -- off." He ground out.

"He's not yours anymore." Angelo smiled his most benevolent smile. His leader of the flock smile that won the hearts and souls of thousands. It had blood in it now. He tasted it in his mouth. He felt the magic gathering. Schneider was going to cast the spell regardless of the threat to Kall-Su. Wonderful.

"He damned well is." Schneider snarled even as he released the orb of energy.

Several things happened at once. The wards, active now and sensitive to the use of magic flared out to engulf the energy that had been released in the room as well as its caster. Angelo started to laugh, started to lift himself and his burden skyward while Schneider was distracted. While the whole of the building began to shudder with the screaming of wards.

Then he was hit from the side. A glancing blow really, but unexpected in its pure lack of magic. Kall-Su's weight was wrenched out of his arms, encircled by the broad, sword bearing back of what could only be the Ninja Master, who Angelo had not even been aware was here. He cursed, extended a hand to blast Gara in the back, but the assassin dove for the edge of the pillion, taking himself and Kall-Su out of easy range.

Angelo screamed in rage. The chamber erupted in a backlash of power as Schneider threw all his considerable power against the wards, against Angelo. And he actually made headway. A wall blasted outwards, a section of warding destroyed. The webwork of it had been damaged when the ceiling had fallen in. He never would have been able to overcome them otherwise. He came up at Angelo even as the wards were grasping after him. Angelo felt fingers of pressure engulf his body. He screamed, focusing his power to fight them off. Bones crushed. He cast the quickest, easiest spell he could think off into Schneider's face and felt the pressure ease up somewhat. Enough for him to shrug out of it and flee for the hole in the ceiling.

The Place Without Windows began to collapse behind him, magic and wards devouring themselves. If Schneider stayed on his tail he'd loose what he came here to find in the destruction. Angelo's prayers were devout and desperate wishing against that. The night air swallowed him, but he didn't know how long he could go, his body hurting as it did. His power fluctuating and wailing, threatening to fail him. He wove spells of invisibility about himself, spells of silence to muffle the scent of his magic. And no blast came to shake his trembling shields.

Failure. Failure. It screamed in his mind. The ocean was a dark void before him. His magic faltered, his consciousness threatened to depart.

The Prophet fell towards the sea.

Gara hit the floor and took the brunt of the impact. There was no graceful way to direct a fall with a hundred seventy pounds of dead weight in one's arms, so he just fell and hit and figured if he survived it, Schneider could repair the damage done. It hurt like hell. Shoulder dislocated, hip smashed, left leg broken in several places from the impact. He ground his teeth and felt his mouth filling with blood. Hoped it was from biting his tongue. It felt like it.

The walls flared alive with a greenish webwork of energy that fluxed upwards towards the top of the pillion he had just sailed off of. The walls pulsed with enough static energy to make his hair stand on end. He tightened his good arm around Kall-Su as pieces of masonry began to fall, shattering on the floor around them. He couldn't do more than that. Couldn't even at the moment shift to shield him as more of the wall crumbled. He felt the trembling of the building in his bones.

_Goddamnit, Schneider,_ he thought, _finish up and get down here._

A figure ran out of the smoke towards them. Gara groaned, knowing he was in no shape to fight off an attack. But it was a girl, and she threw herself to her knees beside them, throwing her body over both their heads when a fall of debris showered down from above. He heard her grunt in pain as she was hit. But she pushed herself up and looked down at him -- or maybe she was looking at Kall, it was hard to tell behind the curtain of her dark hair. All he could really see of her face was a slice of pale skin and trembling lips above a sharp little chin. Her hands where they rested on Kall's shoulder and arm were small. One of them was marked with a slave tattoo. Not one of Angelo's minions then, but one of his servants.

"Have you come to take him away from here?" Her voice was soft, melodious even in its desperation.

"That was the plan." He grunted. It hurt to talk.

"You must hurry." She cast her gaze at the walls around them. "This place wails its deathsong."

"No shit." He muttered.

The floor beneath them shuddered. About fifty feet away a section of it just collapsed. Stone after stone was sucked down widening the hole, bringing its edge closer and closer to them. The girl gasped and grabbed at Gara's arm desperately.

"We've got to move."

"I don't think I can." He said, eyes on the growing pit, at the dust and the stray curls of greenish energy rising up from it. Then with a tremor the floor gave out beneath them. The girl didn't scream. Gara thought he might have in shock as the sudden sensation of falling made his gut clench. Then they weren't. They hovered in the gloom and pieces of masonry rebounded away from them off an invisible shield. Tendrils of energy also streaked towards that shield, feeding upon it, sucking at its energies. Up. They began to sail upwards, and the walls of the place tried to fall in and crush them. The girl hugged herself to both him and Kall-Su. Past the gaping ceiling and into the night sky and then with a sickening lurch they began to drop, only this time they landed on the slope of a mountain and not so hard that bones were broken. The three of them sprawled, skidding a little ways down slope.

"Goddamnit Schneider." Gara cursed. "That hurt."

Schneider hit the ground beside them. His knees buckled and he went down, out of breath and shaking, head bowed so that all one could see was a tangled fall of hair. "You're lucky --" he gasped after a moment. "--That I got you at all. That place sucks magic like a sponge."

Gara twisted his head to look upslope at the dark silhouette of the fortress. Explosions illuminated the tiers. A great piece of it separated from the main mass of the building and began a lumbering roll down the mountain side.

"Uh, Schneider --" Gara would have nudged him if he'd been able. "Think you can levitate us out of here now."

"Give me a minute."

"We don't have one."

Schneider's head snapped up. His eyes widened and he almost got the chance to curse before the darkness around them changed and Gara felt the same pull he had felt when the counter-summons had originally transported them here take effect. Then they weren't there at all.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath48.htm



	48. chapter 48

aftermath48

Forty-eight

It was like a giant hand grabbed Schneider by the scruff of the neck and yanked him sharply and not gently at all through a rent in space. It was unexpected and indignant and he was spitting with rage by the time he was dumped onto the cold, blood crusted roof of Sta-Veron castle. He spun about in a moment's confusion, grasping after a place that was not there anymore. This night sky was not obscured by clouds. Torch light turned the stone of the rooftop flickering orange. Voices cried out in simultaneous alarm. He was sitting in the ashes of his own witchly bonfire with Gara sprawled over his legs, moaning in pain. 

He snapped his head around to make sure the spell had caught everyone it ought. Kall lay a few feet away with the strange girl huddled next to him. The Prophet was gone. Slipped through his fingers. It would be too much to wish that his last barrage of attack before he'd been forced to turn back and snatch Gara and Kall-Su out of the self-destructing fortress, had finished the man off. It could have. Angelo's physical form had been failing, it might have been enough, but until Schneider saw his cold corpse he would not be satisfied. 

Arshes Nei was pelting towards him. Geo Note was on her heels with an astonished look on his craggy face, as if he hadn't thought Schneider would be successful. 

"You're hurt!" Arshes sounded vaguely accusing. Schneider realized she wasn't talking to him when he tried to pull his legs from under Gara's bulk and the big man cried out in pain. 

"Darshe." Arshes looked up at him pleadingly. "Do something."

His mind was still a little too preoccupied with thoughts of the Prophet's escape to wonder when she had gotten so desperately concerned over Gara's well being. He ascertained the extent of the damage. Broken and crushed bones, shoulder, hip, leg -- a bevy of lesser hurts that Schneider was too impatient to worry about. He cast a hasty healing, repairing the major damage and Gara had hardly let out a sigh of relief when Schneider was pushing him off his lower legs and turning to seek out the object of this whole expedition. Now that he thought about it he hadn't seen a flicker of awareness out of Kall-Su since he'd laid eyes on him. 

The girl who'd been caught up in his spell and brought back with them was huddled in a frightened ball a few feet away. Geo Note crouched by Kall-Su, one hand hovering over his pale head. Schneider slapped his hand away with a snarl, sending out his own magical probes to see what damage had been done.

"He's whole -- physically." Geo Note said, sounding a little offended. 

"Shut up." Schneider placed a hand over Kall's forehead, one on his bare chest and sought after injury, but the priest was right. There was none. Just cool skin and even breathing and not a shred of consciousness that Schneider could latch onto and drag Kall back up into the land of the living. 

Gara limped over, half supported by Arshes. "How is he?" There was a great deal of worry in the ninja master's voice. Schneider scowled up at them, then drew his brows at the way Arshes was fussing over Gara. "I don't know and why the hell did I bother to mend your bones if you're going to use her as a crutch?"

Gara blanched. Arshes drew her brows, her lips tightening in what might have been the prelude to a stubborn glare. Schneider's thoughts were too scattered to linger on the two of them. 

"We should get him inside." Geo Note offered his opinion and Schneider glared up at him, the very sound of his voice grating on his nerves. But since it was valid and reasonable advice one could hardly sit here in the cold northern night just to be contrary. One had to show a spark of reason even when all one really wanted to do was throw a tantrum to vent frustration. But he was worried about Kall's lack of response. His luck had not been running good enough of late to hope that it was merely the sleep of exhaustion. 

He put an arm under Kall's shoulders and Geo Note moved to lend a hand.

"Let me help."

"Don't touch him. I've got him." 

The priest backed off at the dangerous look in Schneider's eyes. Schneider got Kall up in his arms with a grunt. Dead weight. Lifeless limbs that were starting to scare him. The old witch opened the tower door for him and stepped aside to let him pass. He barely noticed her. Barely noticed the girl who hugged herself miserably, standing apart from the people who belonged here. He heard them following him down the narrow stairs. He had to be careful in his negotiation of them with his awkward burden. He reached the lower door and with no one to open it for him blasted it off its hinges with a thought. It shattered against the far wall and the startled screams of servants could be heard from the hall. A cluster of them gathered there, drawn he supposed, by the curiosity of what he had been doing on the tower. He brushed past them, ignoring their gasps and their excited chatter. A few of them ran before him down the hall, the others clustered behind joining the procession that trailed him. 

Down to the residential level and the red faced housekeeper was thundering down the hall with an excited serving girl on her heels. She almost fell down when she saw what he carried and began a fervent string of thanksgivings that he put a stop to with the impatient order to go and make certain her lord's chamber was in the order to receive him. She turned on her heels and ran down the hall before him, entering Kall's rooms moments before he did, snapping commands at her servants to get a fire started and hurrying to turn down the blankets herself. 

Schneider laid him down carefully, leaned over him while the room bustled with servants and excited onlookers. He tried another exploration in case he'd missed something on the tower. The noise of the people behind him tore at his concentration. 

"Out!!" he roared, looking over his shoulder to glare at the lot of them. The servants quaked. They stumbled over each other in their efforts to obey him. The guards retreated a little less enthusiastically, but go they did. That left Geo Note and Gara and Arshes. The housekeeper stubbornly stood on the other side of the bed, wringing her hands. The room was somewhat decimated, the wardrobe standing open where he'd had the servants raid it for fuel for his fire. The hearth was cold, not having had a fire in it for weeks. 

It was no worse off than its owner. Kall was filthy. Smudged with dried blood and dirt. The torn trousers he wore were crusted with it. There were faint bruises under the dirt. Distant signs of abuse. Schneider's fingers tightened on the sheets by Kall's head. But there was no present injury. Nothing he could find to account for the depth of the unconsciousness, the lack of even subconscious awareness. He could not even find the pathway into Kall's dreams. It was as if he were not even there. 

"Damnit." He muttered. "Where the hell are you?"

"Darshe." Arshes touched his back. "Heal yourself."

He leaned there a moment more, then forced himself to take stock of his own condition. He was bleeding from no few wounds. He had burns and a few fractured bones that he had managed to ignore for the last half hour or so. Or had it even been that long? He closed his eyes and mended the ills. Straightened up and fixed Keitlan with his stare. "Clean him up. Let me know if he wakes."

Then he whirled and brushed past Arshes, jerked his head at Gara on his way out to indicate he wanted the man's company. Gara walked down the hall at his side, one big hand rubbing at his arm. Arshes followed in their wake. 

"Did you get him?" Gara asked solemnly.

"I don't know. Probably not." He hissed in frustration at the last admission. "Did you recognize anything?"

"Mountains. I'd guess western from the trees. I'd never seen that fortress before."

"Me neither. It was the western range. I could see the ocean. Of course there's a thousand miles of mountainous coast along the western ocean. It doesn't do me a damn bit of good in finding my way back there."

Gara canted a wary look at him. "You sure he's not dead?"

"Yes. No. I need to be certain."

"Okay. We find that fortress -- or what's left of it and we've got a starting point. But you don't honestly think he'd stick around there, do you? For all we know he could be hightailing back south to reclaim his position as Prophet of the One God."

"That would make it easier if he did." 

Gara cast a look over his shoulder at Arshes. "Not exactly." He said slowly.

Schneider stopped, glaring at the two of them. "Don't even start with that drivel about civil war in the south. I don't care if the whole of the south is up in flames as long as Angelo is dead. Hell, I'll start the fire myself if I have to and if the two of you have a problem with that -- oh well. I'll live with the guilt." 

"A little bit of subtlety wouldn't hurt you once and a while, Darshe." Arshes complained. 

"Subtlety? I'm perfectly subtle."

Gara laughed. Schneider's eyes narrowed threateningly, he lifted his chin imperiously and said. "I'm finished talking with you. The both of you. So leave me alone."

He cleaned up. He didn't have the energy for a Sartor spell, so dressed in loose house clothes. Soft, embroidered linen that lay on his skin like a caress. Some of the things Yoko had bought for him in her forays into the city -- before she'd lost the baby. He leaned against the door of his room in a sudden attack of weariness. He had thrown a fair deal of high power spells at Angelo -- had taken no few hits himself in the process -- and the son of a bitch squirms away. Even taken off guard, he managed to escape - managed to surprise them with the tricks he had hidden up his self-righteous sleeve. That damned fortress had been a shock. Nothing to hint what it was on the outside, no warding at all -- but on the inside -- it had almost swallowed him, magic and all, before he'd summoned the strength to break free of it. If he had fought the majority of his battle with Angelo within its walls he wasn't sure if he could have overcome the man.

Little wonder he had not gotten a hint of Kall-Su during his month of searching. Little wonder that Kall had not been able to get out of the place. A month smothered by those wards. A month in a place where the Prophet had nothing better to do than break him. Schneider recalled his time under Angelo's care. The Prophet had at least had the call of his religious duty to distract him then. Even then, he was harder to crack than Kall was. Kall had a soft streak. Kall, when he was in his right mind, had a weakness for morality that Schneider had never developed. Kall felt guilty over things that he wasn't even responsible for. Kall had a need to be accepted that was so deeply buried he refused to admit to himself, thanks to the damned crazy place he had grown up in, but Schneider was aware of it. Schneider had used it in the past to his advantage. The Prophet was a mind witch. If the Prophet had been able to get into _his_ mind, he could damn well get into Kall's. 

His ground his teeth in simmering indignation. Angelo had broken things that belonged to him. Yoko. Kall-Su. He only had Gara to thank that Arshes hadn't ended up a casualty of the Prophet's twisted sense of retaliation. 

He pushed himself off the door, restless to do something -- anything. Went out into the hall, where there were thankfully less mulling domestics to annoy him. Went back down the hall to Kall's room. Keitlan had cleaned the dirt and blood off. Had him under the covers where he lay like the dead, pale and fragile looking. A fire was crackling in the hearth. The housekeeper had shut the open wardrobe doors and drawn the drapes, casting the room in shadow. The woman was adding fuel to the fire, elation turned to nervousness in her eyes. She watched Schneider warily as he stood at the end of the bed, one hand on a carved oaken banister.

"I've never seen him taken sick, my lord." She whispered faintly. "I didn't think that -- sorcerers -- were prone to ailment."

"Its not physical. There are other things . . ."

Other things. It was either the power that got you -- the same power that healed you -- that when used in too much of an abundance, past that safe limit that most wizards instinctually knew, that threw the body into catatonia in efforts to protect itself. Or it was the mind -- because weren't they all creatures who practiced in the intricacies of mentality more than common men? All the pondering and all the lifetime's worth of dogma just built up until it all boiled around inside the mind like a disease and you either blocked it out and let it fester or you convinced yourself that it didn't matter and threw it all out. He was of the latter breed. He thought Kall was most certainly in the former category. All that fuel for Angelo to burn. 

There was a shuffling by the door. A hesitant scratch of fingers trailing along the doorframe. He looked up and drew in his breath, carefully, slowly. Yoko stood there, pressed against the frame, peeking into the room as if she feared it held bogeymen. Her hair was unkempt about her shoulders, her eyes wide and liquid. 

"Yoko?" he called to her softly. She didn't respond. Her eyes fixed on Kall-Su. Tears began to slip down her cheeks. 

"He's lost." She whispered. "He can't find his way back. He doesn't want to." She pushed herself off of the doorframe and padded towards the bed. Sat down carefully on the edge and stared down, sniffling. Her fingers brushed his hair and the tears dripped down her chin. She looked up at Schneider, and there was devastation in that gaze. Devastation and a hurt so deep that only the barest tip of it showed. But he saw it and felt it in the depth of her gaze and it seemed as if someone had hit him in the gut. 

"He hurts people, Rushie and he justifies it with God. I didn't deserve it. He didn't. Don't let him get away with it."

_ I won't._ But he couldn't make his lips form the words. All he could do was stare because she was crying and it was the first time he'd seen her cry since she'd lost the baby. She lay down, next to Kall-Su, wrapping her arms around him, as if he were a child she gave comfort to. She crooned soft, nonsense words low in her throat, and all the while the tears flowed. 

He left them like that, almost in a daze, because she had asked something of him that he didn't know how to go about. He didn't know how to finish what he'd started if his prey stayed to ground. He could not vent his rage or avenge her or Kall, if Angelo refused to show himself. If he ran every time it got to hot for him, retreating to plot in secret and spring traps when they least expected it. If he had known the location of the Prophet's fortress, he would have left within the day, even if it proved nothing more than abandoned ruins. It would have been a starting point. A place to look to see if perhaps he had not finished off the man after all. Perhaps the body lay shattered and broken within those mountains. He thought about the weather. It had not been particularly warm there. Rather cold actually, now that he thought about it -- not that he had recognized it in his wrath. So not too far south. It still left maybe three -- four hundred miles of mountainous coast once one got past the northern range. A great deal of land to search. Hopeless unless he could get a fix on the fortress. Unless the wards that had protected it and that had been used to destroy it were damaged enough to leak the resonance of magic. 

He needed to do something.

Lily sat in a corner of the great hall, huddled away from the fire, from the groups of mulling, excited servants who belonged in this place and she despaired. She was lost here. She didn't even know where here was. Or who these people were. It was cold outside. There was dirty, melting snow on the ground. She had gone into the courtyard to see if she recognized this place and found herself in the yard of a great castle. A great and active castle that was astir with activity and excitement. She heard the scraps of conversation. The hearsay and speculation that ran rampart. They offered thanksgivings to the spirits they worshipped that their lord had been returned to them. They spoke in hushed whispers over the miracle wrought by the _dark wizard._ She thought she knew which one _he_ was. She had seen only glimpses of him in the Place Without Windows, and only marginally more once they had appeared in this place, but she recognized his face. His was not a countenance one would easily forget. Even if only seen briefly. He was the man her old master, the wizard, had met with before the church guards had come and taken them away. He was the man her new, crueler master had been so determined to find. He frightened her almost as much as the Master had. For he was powerful and angry. She'd had enough of powerful, angry men. 

It was the other whispers that made her prick her ears. When they talked about _him._ About Kall-Su. About their lord. Another powerful man, then. She had guessed as much. She felt small and dirty here in this grand hall, with so many servants -- his servants -- coming and going, all of them ignoring her. Where would she go, a masterless slave? Sooner or later someone would see the slave tattoo and claim her. She could not hide the mark forever. Did she even wish to hide it at all. All she had ever known was the life of a slave. She wasn't sure she could take care of herself alone. She didn't even have an instrument to work as a minstrel. Lyres were not cheap to buy. She had nothing to her name to trade for one, save her body and she balked at being reduced to that profession. It was not an easy one to escape once entered. She would have walked out of this castle and into the town beyond if it had not been dark still and she not a little afraid to venture into the streets of an unknown city alone and at night. There were some places that were hardly safe for a woman alone during the height of day.

A shadow fell over her as she sat contemplating her dour existence. She looked up in surprise to find a large, raw boned woman looking down at her. The woman's brows were narrowed in contemplation and perhaps a little distaste. Lily lowered her head slightly, letting her hair shroud the fright in her eyes. 

"You're the girl that came back with Lord Schneider. You belonged to the monster that took my lord and hurt lady Yoko."

Lily didn't know what to say to that, other than to slowly nod her head in acquiescence. "He was my master. Yes." She whispered.

"Hummph." The woman snorted in disgust. "Vilest creature on the face of the earth, if you ask me. I'll have nothing of his in this castle."

"I'll leave." Lily said, fighting back the tremor of dread in her voice. She started to push herself up. 

"What's that on your hand. A slave mark?" The woman's hand shot out, quick as a cat and snatched Lily's wrist. "You're a slave?"

It was an obvious question. The answer so very obvious with the scarring of her skin. 

"There is no slavery in Sta-Veron." The woman announced primly. "Lord Kall-Su doesn't permit it."

Lily flinched at his name. She wanted the woman to let her hand go.

"I don't imagine a slave would have much choice in the master who bought her. Did you?"

"No, mistress." Barely a whisper. "I was not --- content under his rule."

"Hummph. No slave trade here, but slavers pass through. You'll find yourself back on the block if you wonder about in the city. All right then, there's nothing to do but have you stay here, but I warn you there are no slackabouts in my castle. There's chores a plenty for the servants. What do you do, girl?"

"Do? I --I am a minstrel."

"A minstrel? That's a lackwit's profession. Not honest work. There's laundry to be washed and work in the kitchen that will do you just fine. Room and board and a silver piece a week for your troubles. A slave couldn't ask for more than that."

"No." She agreed softly. A slave could never ask for more than that. 

The woman's face softened slightly at the humble tone. She patted Lily's hand. 

"I don't envy the life of a slave. I'm Keitlan, housemistress of this castle. What's your name, girl?"

"Lily."

"You look bruised and battered enough to sleep a handful of nights and here there's only a slice of this one left. I'll have one of the girls show you to the maid's dormitory and find you a cot. Come down to the kitchen tomorrow with the other girls for breakfast and we'll see about getting your situated."

"Yes ma'am."

"What are you doing up here?" 

Arshes crept up behind him on the tower as he stared at the lightening night sky to the south west. The faint stain of his blood was still outlined on the tower floor. The pile of cinder that had been the bonfire had mostly blown away on the feirce winds that played at this the highest point of the castle. He didn't say anything. Just stared.

She stood behind him for a while. Not moving, but he could feel her presense. He could always feel her presense. Then in a small, accuastory voice she said.

"You're planning on leaving, aren't you? You're going to go looking for him and you don't even know where to start."

He had a notion. He didn't say that, too tired and full of turbulence to explain himself to her. 

"Oh, that's just fine." She hissed. "Go off and leave everyone else to deal with the hard things. It's so easy to run and fight the battle. You never did give a damn about the casulties."

He slowly turned to fix her with a disaproving stare. "Don't presume to preach to me, Arshes. We both know you're not qualified."

"Damnit, Darshe, as impossible as it may sound there are people here who need you. Need your presense! Yoko does. Kall-Su does, though its beyond me why, since you always did treat him like shit. I do! You cannot just run off when everything is so screwed up here."

He stared at her, into her dark eyes and remembered the look she had given Gara. Another time and it would have sent him into a fury. Now he just felt cold and emotionless.

"You need me? And here I thought Gara was the benafactor of your affection nowadays."

She glared at him. Her fists clenched at her sides, her ears twitched in aggitation. So very upset, his Arshes.

"What do you care? You ignore me because you're afraid Yoko will hate you for it. You don't need me, Darshe. Does it offend you so greatly that someone else might? Goddamned you. Sometimes I hate you so much."

"But not forever, right." He mused. "Because eventually they all die and its back to you and me." 

She just looked at him, then she turned away and dissapeared down the tower door. He turned back to look at the distant mountains, but his words played in his mind and he couldn't quite see them for the blur of tears. 

He might have taken off that night, so disturbed by the mere notion of his enemies continued existence had he been. But the conversation with Arshes haunted him in another way and he found himself downstairs, standing in the portal of Kall-Su's darkened room. Staring at Yoko, who had fallen asleep on top of the covers next to Kall. At the both of them, his injured ones, his lost ones who he had not been able to protect and blamed himself. All to get at him. One way or another Angelo had done it all to get at him for something he had never really had a choice in doing to begin with. 

He brushed her hair, the soft curve of her tear streaked cheek. 

"I'm sorry." He whispered to the room at large. And because he was weary of mind, body and magic, and more melancholy than he could easily recall being, he lay down next to her and wrapped his arms about the both of them. Yoko murmured in her sleep. Kall didn't move. Schneider buried his face in her hair and tried to block out everything. If he didn't, at least for this while, it would drive him mad. 


	49. Chapter 49

aftermath49

Forty-nine

She woke up for the first time in a very long while with more than a dreamy awareness of where and who she was. She lay with her eyes closed and savored the dull ache that lodged in her chest. The scratchy rawness at the back of her throat that signified tears to come or tears already shed. Which, she didn't know. Recent memory was hazy and incomplete. She opened her eyes on faint, spore dusted sunlight. There was warmth and comfort. And confusion. She drew her brows, wetting her lips, wondering why she was lying next to Kall-Su, one knee thrown over his thighs, one arm draped over his chest. Embarrassing situation to find oneself in. Granted he was under sheet and blanket and she on top of them, but still --- her sense of propriety was scandalized.

Then she realized that someone was pressed against her back and that an arm was encircling her and she felt a moment of dazed panic -- of bewildered claustrophobia, before she tilted her head to catch a slice of Rushie's profile, mostly concealed by the wealth of silver hair spilled over his shoulders and over onto her own. She slowed her breathing forcing back the shock. Trying to understand. The ceiling was a blank canvas which did not divert her attention, so she stared at it blindly and tried to sort her thoughts. Tried to organize her memories. It was a hard task. Recollections meandered aimlessly about in her mind. Flashes of images here. Remembrances of pain there. Tears welled up in her eyes, running down her temples and into her hair. She could not quite recall where she had been for long while, but she knew where it had started. She knew how it had started and by who's hand.

She choked back a sob, bringing a hand to her mouth to bite -- anything to keep the cry back. A few moments where her body betrayed her, trembling uncontrollably, then she fought to bring back some semblance of control -- of strength. Shifted gently so that she could bury her face in Rushie's shoulder, feel the silken strands of his hair against her cheek and inhale the scent of him. She missed him. She thought he had been here all along and she had been as far away from him as a continent or the distance between earth and hell. Only this time she'd been the one in that fiery demesne. Her fingers clutched spasmodically at the soft material of his shirt, at the hard muscle underneath. He stirred, drawing breath in a sudden soft hiss, jerking his head back as if startled out of some bad dream.

"Shit." His breath tickled her hair. "Yoko?"

She didn't say anything, just buried her face against him and felt him almost hesitantly tighten his arm around her, drawing her body closer. She wanted control over her emotions, but it kept slipping through her fingers, fickle and elusive. The tears leaked anew and she whispered hoarsely.

"I'm sorry. I don't know where my head's been lately." Where her head had been. As if she had forgotten to snuff out the candles before leaving the room. She tried to come up with something more eloquent to say and all she ended up crying was. "Oh, goddess. Oh, goddess. My baby. He took my baby."

He pressed her head against his shoulder, stroking her hair. "I know. I know. It's okay. It'll be okay. He'll burn for it, I swear."

She shuddered, trying to keep from wailing out her grief. She had the vague impression it was long overdue. That she had put it off for weeks and weeks. Flashes of pain long gone but only now remembered traced the line of her nerves; of her spine. She bit her lip and tasted blood.

"You brought me back." She murmured, amazed. "I was dead and you brought me back."

"It wasn't your time."

"I think I wanted to go."

He didn't say anything to that. She shifted to look up at him, moved a hand to brush his hair back because she needed to see his expression. He looked troubled -- at a loss perhaps to deal with that declaration. It was a weakness of his, that balking at the truly, deeply personal anguishes. He'd rather pretend they weren't there, or banish them with the sheer strength of his will -- anything but admit to suffering or acknowledge that something he loved could hurt so badly and there was nothing he could do about it. She didn't mind. It just made him a little more human.

"I don't anymore." She said softly and that admission brought to mind that thing which had dragged her from the daze she had been existing in back to reality. "Oh, Rushie, what happened to Kall?"

His lips tightened, lashes fluttered down to cover the glimmer of anger in his eyes. He didn't have to answer for her to know. The same thing that had happened to her. How long? How long for her to get the sense that he preferred death over waking. She had drifted by the room and that seventh sense she had had latched onto misery -- onto fear -- onto overwhelming guilt. But they were aimless, drifting emotions with nothing to anchor them because Kall-Su wasn't there to put a name on them. The things that made up Kall-Su were buried so deep that he was lost and all that existed in the upper layers of subconscious was a traumatized, crying child.

She pushed herself up, her own misery pushed aside as she realized someone else she loved was suffering. She laid a hand on his cheek, wishing him back with all her might. If she could come back, he could. But no response. Nothing but a fluttering movement of his lashes, a hitch in his breathing before it evened out.

"He's hurt. He doesn't want to come back."

Schneider sat up behind her, wrapped an arm about her shoulders, looking over her head at Kall-Su. "I don't care what he wants."

"Yes you do." She said softly. "But maybe it will make a difference anyway."

She was somewhat shocked to see her father. She thought she had dreamed his presence. To find him here, in Sta-Veron, was a surprise she was not certain was pleasant or foreboding. A certain guilt for leaving Meta-Rikan without telling him good-bye - or even leaving a note of explanation had weighed on her for months. He didn't seem to care. He was overjoyed to see her with awareness in her eyes, wrapping her in his smothering embrace until she couldn't breath and whispering prayers of thanksgiving to the goddess for her recovery.

In fact everyone from the kitchen staff to Captain Kiro gathered around her when she descended downstairs to the main hall, practically suffocating her with their goodwill. She was saved by Schneider's foreboding presence and dark warning glares. They backed off when he stepped up behind her and congratulated her on her health from a distance. He put his hands on her shoulders very propietarily and dared Geo Note to make an issue of it. Father was wise enough to do little more than frown at the familiarity. One had to assume he knew of the miscarriage and thus of their more than proper relationship. Her face flushed hot. She could not quite look him in the eye, afraid of the reprimand she might see there.

Cook went to extra trouble to make a suitable celebratory feast in her honor, which made Yoko nervous and shy. She hated to be the center of attention, but even Schneider seemed content to give her the honor this day. He lurked around her protectively, positively terrifying any of the maids she had made friendships with from coming up to her and talking. The only person who wasn't afraid of her was Gara who grabbed her up off her feet and hugged her.

"What a day for luck." He laughed. "We get both Kall and you back. The fates are smiling, humm?"

"Luck. Yes." She murmured and wished she could break away from all the smiling faces, because she did not feel particularly happy. Her head spun a little from dizziness. She needed a breath of fresh air.

"Where are you going?" Schneider asked when she rose.

"Just outside for a bit. It's stifling in here."

"Company?"

"No. I'll be back in a minute."

He let her go and she slipped out the main doors and stood on the great front steps breathing in the cool afternoon air. Almost evening. A day had gone by and she had slept it away. Weeks had gone by with her walking in a waking sleep. The snow was nothing but patches in the courtyard. People tromped across it, grinding it further into the mud. Solders going or leaving duty. Stable boys carrying wheel barrows full of muck to the compost heap out side of the castle walls. Servants coming and going from the city. People going about their afternoon's business. A maid came from the direction of the barracks carrying a basket of laundry. A servant Yoko hadn't seen before. So much seemed to have changed while she drifted in her own world. The girl never looked up at her, just walked through the mud past the main entrance heading for the service entry around the far corner, but Yoko, who's powers of perception seemed unusually active, sensed a spark of light within her. A lyrical shimmer of something that did not quite coincide with the humble exterior she wore. She passed beyond the corner with the barracks's laundry.

Yoko hesitated to go back inside, dismayed at the sound of so many voices, the laughter, the celebration that these people latched onto out of desperation -- anything to drive off the long harshness of winter. To drive off the other tragedies they endured so stoically in the north. She was not up to it yet. So she chose another route. She stepped down into the mud and picked her way around the courtyard, followed in the wake of the servant girl to the large, low ceilinged laundry room, where the girl and another dour faced woman who never seemed to have anything to say to the other servants or anyone else for that matter scraped clothes over ridged wash boards. The later looked up with an indifferent expression when Yoko loitered in the doorway. The other dumped her load into a tub of soapy water and began swishing the clothes about with single minded efficiency.

"Hello." Yoko said. The older woman looked at her as if she were spouting gibberish. The younger one half looked up from under a fall of dark hair. Silence soaked the air. Yoko begin to feel embarrassed for coming at all.

"Hello." The dark haired girl finally murmured, as if uncomfortable with the expectant silence. Her hands worked at wringing out a heavy tunic.

"I saw you walk by. I didn't recall seeing you here before and ---" And what? She was nosy? She was trying to find anything to escape the furor in the main hall?

"I only came last night." The girl said softly. Her voice was an evenly modulated whisper, just loud enough to hear, but one had to strain a little.

"Oh."

Another length of silence. Then the older laundry woman snapped in exasperation. "Your wizard brought her back with him. She was one of his lordship's enemy's slaves."

"Oh."

The girl worked diligently at her wash. Yoko leaned against the door frame, staring, even though she knew it was unpolite. There was something about the girl that struck a chord of familiarity.

"Do I know you?" She was never one for avoiding an issue that ate at her.

"No, milady." The girl answered.

"I think I've seen you somewhere -- I just can't put my finger on it."

The girl sighed, looked up from under the concealment of her hair. She had a pretty face -- what one could see of it. She had a slave tattoo on the hand she lifted to tuck one side of her hair behind her ear. The tattoo did it. Yoko remembered this girl singing. Remembered the clarity and the almost magical lilt of her voice as if she had heard it only days ago, not months.

"You're the minstrel that was singing at the tavern in Judas. You were with the wizard I tried to hire."

The girl very slowly inclined her heard.

"How on earth did you get here?"

"Yoko? What the hell are you doing in the laundry room?"

Schneider stalked up behind her, obviously having gone long enough without her presence. She turned, grabbed his sleeve and pulled him a few unwilling steps into the cold, clammy room. His head almost brushed the ceiling.

"This is the singer that was with the wizard in the tavern in Judas. The one I got to help with the wards, remember?"

He turned his nose up slightly, looking as if he'd really rather not be here. "That hedge witch? Don't waste the term wizard on such a charlatan. He probably couldn't have healed a wart much less understood those wards."

"Don't say that." For the first time the dark haired girl's voice rose above a whisper. She glared at him angrily, jutting out her small chin. "He was a decent man and he died because of you."

"Oh, no." Yoko whispered.

Schneider sniffed disdainfully. "No great loss, I'm sure. But you found a new master soon enough."

"Rushie!" Yoko elbowed him sharply in the ribs.

"He killed Elijaro. He killed him for nothing more than talking with you. I had no choice." Almost there were tears in the girl's eyes. Almost, but not quite and not tears of sorrow, but of frustration.

"You must have made a cozy niche for yourself to have survived so long in the Prophet's care. Did you warm his bed, little slave girl?"

Yoko glared, hating that smug, predatory look in Schneider's eyes, the one that turned him from a man she loved to one she just wanted to hit. Repeatedly.

"You're just like him." The girl said, voice gone soft again. "Just like the Master. You don't care about anything but your own satisfaction. You don't care who you hurt to get it. I can see it in your eyes."

Schneider's smug look turned to one of anger. Yoko felt him tense, put her self in his path when he might have taken a step towards the girl. The older laundry woman was staring between them in open mouthed shock.

"You little bitch. I should have left you there to rot."

"You should have." She agreed, hair falling back down to cover her face.

"I dislike you." He hissed. Yoko put her hands on his chest and shoved him backwards a step.

"Out! Just get out and go cool off!" She gave him another push and he glared at her. She narrowed her eyes and met it levelly. "Now, Rushie!"

He said something under his breath, but retreated. She hoped he didn't do anything violent. She had heard about the castle wall. She turned back to the girl, took a breath and extended a hand.

"I'm Yoko and I would very much like to hear what happened?"

Yoko was simply amazing. Lily could not quite recall meeting anyone like her. Candid and bluntly honest and sincerely concerned for the plight of a mere, common slave, when she was obviously so much more. Lily just did not share with people, it was too painful, yet she found herself telling this girl she had known only a few hours about her earliest memory of being a slave. Of watching her family grow smaller and smaller on that distant dirt road while she was taken away by the man they had sold her to. She had never told anyone that, but Yoko dragged it out and patted her hand and looked at her with those great brown eyes in compassion. Pity would have made Lily withdraw. Compassion she did not know how to deal with.

She told her about being taken by the church guard in Judas and of her master's gruesome death at the hands of the man she now knew was the legendary Prophet. She spoke haltingly of her time in the Place Without Windows. Of the isolation, of the fear that any small thing she did wrong would result in her own grisly death. She spoke carefully about Kall-Su's coming to that place, of the Master's fixation on him. Of some of the terrible things he did to break him and Yoko's compassion turned hard and brittle. It was an anger they had in common.

"I can't recall wishing death -- really wishing death on another human being -- but I wish it on him."

They sat beyond the stables, on the crude stone bench circling the stable well. Lily had her legs pulled up under the plain but thick woolen dress Keitlan had supplied her with. She had been given thick boots that laced up to her calves and kept her feet amazingly warm. Yoko told her what the Master had done to her. What he had taken from her and tears slipped down her cheeks in the telling. Lily had never had anyone admit a thing of so heart wrenching and personal a nature to her. No one confided so deeply in a slave. She stared, thinking that this young woman, not so much older than herself, was one of the strongest people she had ever known.

"And yet, I don't know if I want Rushie going after him. I don't know whether its selfishness or fear."

"I'm sorry I said that to him." Lily said, and she was, but for Yoko's sake, not his.

"Its all right. You were right -- sort of. He gets a little megalomanical sometimes and he used to be really bad, but he's not anymore."

Lily had heard the stories. The campfire tales of Dark Schneider and his reign of conquest. A little megalomanical seemed somewhat subdued when speaking of him. But he had come and destroyed the Place Without Windows, which in her mind was the worst hell she could imagine. He had done it to rescue Kall-Su, who was -- and she shivered helplessly at the thought -- another figure out of whispered legend. The High King of Ice. The Ice Lord. Cold Death to his enemies all the stories said. And she had dared to touch him. To yearn for something that could never be in the desperate desire to banish the solitude the Place Without Windows had cast over her. Fool. Fool. Fool.

"Still it was not my place to say." Lily admonished herself.

Yoko grinned at her. "It was terribly brave. Do you know how many people in the world would have the nerve to say something like that to his face?" She held up the fingers on one hand. "Probably less than this."

"I'm not brave."

"Oh, I think you'd be surprised. You've survived this long, haven't you. That takes courage."

Yoko's praise made her nervous. She stood up of a sudden. "Mistress Keitlan will be angry at my laziness. I must get back to work."

"Oh, she's not so bad." Yoko smiled at her, a sunny smile that seemed to make the day brighter. Lily shook her head, amazed again.

"We'll talk again, okay?" Yoko insisted as she hurried away. She did not answer, but she thought she would like that very much.

[ NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath50.htm



	50. Chapter 50

aftermath50

Fifty

Crying. Someone was crying in the distance. Pitiful, choked sobs that drifted in the air like summer pollen. He ignored it, as he ignored the screams of all the ghosts that haunted him, accusing him of their deaths. A thousand, hollow eyed faces that stabbed condemning, bone white fingers at him as he passed. A thousand victims he had sent to their graves. He had hardly cared when he did it; what cause for remorse now? What cause for anything but blind, unreasoning release. He sought after something that eluded him. He wanted -- he needed to find the utter darkness, the utter caliginous depths where nothing mattered. Where sensation ceased to be. Where emotion was swallowed by the void.

No matter how hard he tried, he could not completely overlook the guilt or the crying. It kept him from the place he sought. It pulled at him like thread thin chains, insubstantial, yet unbreakable. It made him feel and he did not want to feel. He wanted to die. But the only death here were the scattered corpses of his victims and his lethargy towards them was beginning to shatter. He was beginning to panic at their cloying reproachment, at the wealth of them scattered about the field of his making. The sky was inky black above the frost covered earth. The dead could not move to follow him because their legs were frozen to the ground. He moved through them, turning skirting sideways to avoid a hand here, a touch there. Occasionally they would topple in their eagerness to reach for him and the frigid limbs would break off at the ankles, sending the body toppling forward. He cringed and wanted out. Out! Out!

There were pathways to choose from. A cross roads that did not offer oblivion, but other less savory choices. Down one way echoes of religious exhortations drifted, and remembrances of agony and shame. He turned away sharply before the words could register in his mind, wanting nothing of that. Desperately wanting nothing of that path. Down another and something huge and all powerful lurked, waiting to devour any sense of purpose, of free will that he had left. It was hypnotic almost, the thrill of that call. Familiar and so easy to fall into. Almost an oblivion in itself. But, most of those corpses in the field he had flown from, had come from his association with that Omnipotence. No, better not to go that way.

Which left the path from which the crying emanated. Those plaintive sounds terrified him more than what the other two paths had offered. There was weakness there, and unmitigated acceptance of fear and pain. He did not want that awareness. Wished the opposite so badly he stood in the cross roads for what seemed an eternity, hoping some other choice would appear. But none did. So his choices were the guilt from behind him. The pain to the left. Subsumption to the center. Or awareness.

Gradual awareness. Warmth. Softness under his skin. The faint smell of lavender in the linen under his head. Lashes fluttered, but did not open. He was frankly afraid to look upon the world and find the pleasant sensations all a trick designed to torment him. He listened for tell tale sounds that might betray the illusion. The clink of chain. The almost silent scuttering of mice. The low, harsh breathing of his tormentor. Nothing but the quiet crackle of fire. The occasional shifting of charred embers.

So very appealing, those quiet, comforting sounds. He curled his fingers in the sheets. Wetness formed at the corners of his closed lashes. He had to blink to be rid of it, and held his breath in anticipation of what he might see when he did. But it was just a room. A familiar, darkened room filled with familiar, shadowed things. He stared at the things in his line of vision numbly, trying to fill the gap of events separating this place from the other. And couldn't. And found that he didn't care. The stink of the place still lingered in his nostrils. The feel of the chains still made his wrists itch. The words reverberated inside his head. But they kept their distance for the time being, only faint reminders in the background.

He pushed himself up, sheets falling off of clean, whole skin. He stared down at himself, at his unmarred wrists in dumbfoundment. He swung a leg over the side of the bed, discovered he was without clothing and took longer than he suspected was normal to conclude that fact needed to be remedied. He stood and dizziness assaulted him. His knees buckled and he caught himself on the side of the bed. Knelt there on the rug, with his face pressed into the mattress and tried to stop the spinning and the flashes of visions that pulsed behind his eyes. Angelo's face. Grandfather's face. Mother's dying eyes.

He gathered strength, pushed himself up and stood unsteadily. Put a hand to the bedpost to help him make the wardrobe. That stately piece of furniture proved an enigma. It's normally full insides bare to the cedar paneling. He leaned on one of the doors and stared at it in bewilderment, the vague notion crossing his mind that maybe he was dead and they had cleaned out his chambers. Perhaps he was only a ghost haunting these rooms. He'd rather hoped death would bring forgetting, not eternal remembrances.

He dragged a sheet off the bed and wrapped it about himself, opened the door and stepped out into the hall without a clear destination to guide him. He clutched the sheet together with one hand and used the other to steady himself against the wall. He stopped a dozen steps down and tried to focus his thoughts enough to figure where he wanted to go. A maid came down the hall carrying an armful of linens. If he were a ghost in reality, then she would pass right by.

Apparently he was not, for when she saw him, she squealed, dropped her load and exclaimed, "My Lord!" Before bolting back down the hall the way she had come. He stood there, as startled at her reaction as she had apparently been at the sight of him. A door opened down the hall, the maid's cry rousing its occupant. Gara ran out, his tunic unlaced and hastily thrown on, his hair ruffled as if he'd been woken from a sleep. He caught the hind end of the fleeing maid, muttered. "What the hell?" before he turned and caught sight of Kall-Su, leaning against the wall.

"Godsdamned." The Ninja Master breathed and started down the hall towards him. Arshes Nei came out of the same room, adjusting her own tunic, her eyes wary. He hardly had the presence of mind to ponder his own existence, much less what the Thunder Empress and the Ninja Master might have been doing to exhibit such a state of dishevelment.

"You're awake." Gara stated the obvious and put hands on him. He flinched, not quite able to help it. Gara seemed not to notice. He had his big hands on Kall-Su's shoulders and was staring down critically. "What are you doing out here in the hall way wrapped in a sheet."

Kall-Su stared up at him, eloquent speech beyond him. "My clothes are gone."

He must have sounded shaky because even Arshes Nei leaned in with concern on her dark face. "Get him back to his room, Gara." She suggested.

He started to protest, but Gara turned him around with an arm around his shoulders and walked him back to his room. He sat on the end of the bed, leaning against the bedpost, while Gara studied him like he was an exhibit at fair and Arshes stalked about the room as if she were on the prowl for something.

"I thought they fixed him." Gara said, talking to her about him as if he weren't there. It felt as if he weren't.

"Somethings you can't just fix." She said, sounding ominous. "Look at Yoko."

Look at Yoko? Look at Yoko what? Was she dead? Schneider had brought her back. Please don't let her be dead. Not one more guilt on his doorstep.

They both looked at the door as footsteps sounded in the hall. Then Schneider was filling the doorway, his predator eyes fixing on Kall-Su and all he could think about was what if something had happened to Yoko. Schneider blamed him. The last words spoken between them had been an assignment of guilt. He pressed his forehead against the bedpost, trying to block it all out.

"He's a little disoriented." Gara's voice said.

"A little?" Arshes Nei snorted.

A sleight weight settled on the mattress beside him. A hand touched his shoulder hesitantly. "Kall-Su. Are you all right?"

Sweet voice. A boundless feeling of relief swept over him at the sound of it. She wasn't dead.

"I don't know." He answered dully, the words drawn out of him because her hand was still on his shoulder and he didn't think she would remove it until he responded. And he could not quite convince himself that being touched was a good thing. "My clothes are gone."

"We'll get you new ones." She promised. He opened his eyes, swept them to look at her because he did not want to meet Schneider's. Schneider was hard to deal with at the best of times. But he got snared by them anyway. He hadn't realized Schneider had approached so close, practically standing over top him. Got caught by the intensity of the stare and blinked up, wide-eyed, at the scrutiny.

"What's wrong, Kall?" Low, pointed question. So very difficult to answer. A hundred things surged the the fore. He couldn't utter one of them. Tried to force them back because his hands on the bedpost were starting to shake. There should have been a shell, a protective layer of impassivity that he had always relied on -- but he couldn't find it. Shattered along with everything else.

He turned his face back to the wood of the bedpost because he was trapped by Yoko on the one side and Schneider standing before him. Schneider caught his chin in his fingers, forced him to look at him. Not roughly, but with enough pressure to say he was not willing to brook refusal. And it brought to mind the Prophet's fingers on him. He jerked backwards in sudden panic and Schneider's brows drew in displeasure.

"I'm sorry." Kall-Su mumbled, because he couldn't think of anything else to say and that supplication had seemed so often on his tongue of late.

Schneider cursed under his breath, spun on his heel and stalked out of the room. Kall-Su felt sick.

"What the hell was that?"

Gara chased Schneider out into the hall, catching up with him halfway to the stairs down. "You're not angry at him?"

"No, I'm not fucking angry at him! God, give me a little credit, would you?"

"Then what?"

Schneider stopped at the top of the stairs and waved a hand back down the hall. "What do you think, Gara? He's so fucked up he can't even stand to be touched. I should have made certain Angelo was dead."

"Yeah, well if you had, Kall and me both would be too. You'll get no complaints from me about being lax that once."

He was angry and he was restless. He paced a few steps back down the hall and then back again. There was nothing downstairs but the supper he and Yoko had left when the maid came bolting down with the news that her lord was awake and wondering the halls. He had no stomach to finish it. He hadn't expected to see Kall looking so damned -- abused. It was so clear in his eyes it was painful to look at. It was the look of the boy he had found on the road over a century ago, before he'd taught him that he was a step above the rest of humanity. Dazed and lost and guilty.

He glared sullenly at Gara from under his lashes. "Whatever. And stop assuming I answer to you."

"I never assumed any such thing." Gara managed a shocked look.

"You assume it all the time." Schneider brushed past him. Not downstairs, but down the hall and into Kall-Su's library, assaulted by a sudden onslaught of guilt over the state he had left it in. Kall was more fastidious about his precious books than anything else and Schneider had left them strewn about the room in his fervid search for the right components for the spell. There were a few broken spines where, he'd tossed various volumes away from him in disgust when they proved fruitless. There was one particularly thick book he'd spent hours going over because it had hinted that it contained information he wanted only to find it useless to his cause -- it had been the victim of a sleep deprived tantrum and lay in a pile of charred ashes against the wall. Boring book, really, pertaining to druidic rites and passages. Kall might not even notice it. He opened the windows and summoned a tiny wind elemental to sweep the ashes outside. He poked about the room, putting books up in an order that seemed rational to him, but honestly he couldn't recall where what had been.

"Housekeeping?" Yoko wondered into the study. Three days since she'd come back to her senses and he still had to stare into her eyes for a moment to assure himself she was all there.

"Just putting things back. I don't see why the servants don't come in here and clean up."

"They're all afraid to come in here. Too many books of magic and the black arts. Kall never lets them touch any of his collection. Oh my was this scroll torn before?" She bent down to pick up a yellowed scroll that had rolled under the desk. Schneider looked at it and shrugged. One suspected not.

"So -- what do you think?" he asked it idly, but the answer from her meant a great deal. Yoko had a way of reading souls.

"I think it'll be okay. Eventually. I think he's hurt and he's hiding things and that we ought to keep an eye on him. And I think that you intimidate him and you need to stop."

"Intimidate? ME? I do not."

"Oh, you are so full of it. You intimidate everybody. Nature of the beast and all that."

"Beast?"

"Rushie. Just be nice, all right?" She offered him the scroll. He took it sullenly and tossed it haphazardly on a shelf with like scrolls. He leaned on the sill of the window, while she continued what he'd started. She was more careful about it. Looking at titles and scanning the shelves for like subjects.

"He can rearrange it when he's got his head straight." She mused, sliding a book into place. "I suppose he can't complain about the disarray, since it got him home. You're very crafty, according to old Ayntha. But, of course I knew that."

"Did you?" he glanced away from the deepening night outside to watch her.

She grinned. "When you're not being dense or blinded by your libido."

"Libido? Me? I think you have me mistaken for someone else. Do you have any earthly idea how long its been since I've slept with a woman?"

"Well, I know you haven't slept -- is that what we're calling it now? -- with me for let me see, six - seven months. So that would leave Arshes -- any of the prettier girls in town, where else have you been in that time --?"

He really shouldn't have opened that line of discussion. He had truly been commendable -- so good he shocked himself. There had been a great deal of distractions and one of the surest ways to take his mind off of sex was anger and revenge. "I haven't touched a woman since I've been in this frigid place."

"Really?"

"Not even you." He stared at her pointedly. She sniffed and bent down to pick up a book half hidden under the desk. It presented a nice view of tunic covered backside.

"It must be hard." She commiserated, not sounding particularly sorry.

"It getting that way." He muttered. If anger and revenge distracted him from thoughts of sex, then the opposite was most certainly true. A little niggling voice in his head recalled him of the hideous bargain Mother had forced out of him. He honestly couldn't know whether she had collected or not. Whether she considered them even with the baby he'd had buried in the mountains that she might or might not have taken. It was his first born in a fashion. She had never clarified a live birth. He might be able to argue that if it ever came down to it. Deities and demons and the like tended to be sticklers for wordplay. Besides and he'd had a lot of time to mull it over once his head had cleared after the whole Mother incident and his idiotic solution to the problem. If he could pull a body back from the dead he could certainly assure that a child was not conceived. Yoko didn't ever need to know. And he wanted very badly to devour her.

"Shall we break this streak of chastity?" he grinned at her lazily, but his eyes were glittering. She wrapped her arms around a leather bound volume and looked at him warily.

"You've gone this long."

"Wouldn't you like to see how it feels to make love on a bed instead of on the forest floor?"

She opened her mouth, then shut it, a blush spreading over her cheeks. He took a step towards her and she backed one up. He tilted his head at the roundness of her eyes and the way she bit her lower lip in nervousness. It made him want to bit it. He caught her face and swooped down on her. She went a little stiff against him, the book pressing against his ribs. Her teeth were clenched, but her lips were soft and pliant.

"I don't think I'm ready yet." She murmured against his mouth. But she did not exactly pull away, so he pretended not to hear it, cupping the back of her head and letting his lips travel over the smooth line of her jaw. She shuddered and let out a little sound of pleasure -- it was a sensitive spot.

Almost she melted into him, until his hands roamed down to knead the flesh of her bottom, then she pushed against him and broke contact.

"I'm not ready yet, Rushie." She declared, louder and between labored breaths. She slammed the book against his chest with enough impact to force the breath out of his lungs. "And don't pretend you didn't hear me the first time." She stabbed a finger against the book he had been forced to grab, then whirled and marched from the study. Leaving him with an aching monument to how badly he wanted her. For a compassionate woman she was cruel beyond measure.

Mistress Keitlan brought Kall-Su something to eat and a finely stitched robe to wear that was a little oversized. She promised a selection of more appropriate clothing by morning. He belted the folds of the thing together and let the sleeves fall half way down his hands without bothering to push them back. The food he had vague awareness of. The smell made him queasy. He could not recall the last time he had eaten. He thought it had been a very long while, his body pulling at sorcerous reserves to nourish itself. But it wasn't the same. The selection she brought him was too rich to tolerate, so he quietly requested something simpler. She stared at him with frown lines between her brows, but he did not offer more than that request, so she went about his bidding, muttering under her breath things he had no interest in absorbing.

She came back with a porridge sweetened with honey. He picked at that listlessly, one side of him insisting that he needed it, another ambiguously wondering why he bothered. _You should never have been born. I'll burn in hell because of your existence. _

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the vision of her face as she raised the Falchion over her head. Focused, stubborn concentration as she strove to eradicate her sin. _You should have died. You deserve to die. I want to die._ Voices echoed in his head. Hers, Grandfathers, Angelo's -- his own.

He shoved the table away. It toppled and the bowl went flying. Porridge spattered the carpet. The fire cackled at him, mindless and cheerful. He hissed at it, threw a hand out and the whole thing stonework and embers, iron grill and hearth stones grew heavy with ice. The weight of it sagged, splintering. The sound of splintering ice was as irksome in itself as the crackle of flame. He stared at it. He had not meant to do it. Had meant perhaps to put out the fire -- irrational action in itself. He had not intended to encase one wall of his chamber in a sheet of ice. Had his control slipped that much?

Chill seeped into the room. He didn't mind. Cold was not abhorrent to him. He retreated to the bed. Settled into soft goose feather pillows, tired and desperately wanting to fall back into the oblivion of sleep. He had overheard someone say he had slept three days straight, but it hardly seemed enough. Even when he'd slept in that other place, there had been no rest. No respite from the nightmares. He didn't remember any lately.

Mistress Keitlan exclaimed over the melted ice that soaked his floor. Her shock stirred him out of slumber. Other voices joined hers in conjecture over the reason and he wondered why so many females dared to intrude upon his rest. He peered at them from beneath his lashes. Keitlan, two of her maids, and Yoko who was complaining about the state of the rug. The two maids held armfuls of neatly folded clothing. Keitlan was looking at the ceiling as if she suspected a leak from above. Yoko was not so easily deceived. She marched over and shook his shoulder. He glared miserably, beset and besieged in the privacy of his own rooms, wishing then all gone.

"Kall-Su, did you do this?" Yoko demanded. She had no sense of decorum. He threw an arm over his eyes, hoping that if he couldn't see her, she'd go away and take the others with her. Yoko was not so accommodating. Her voice hammered at him.

"Kall where did all the water come from? Its an inch thick over the whole floor. The carpet is ruined. And this was the best of the lot. Do you know how much this carpet cost?"

He ought to, having paid for it. But he could not quite care. However, he gathered she would go on until he answered, so he said quietly. "The fire annoyed me."

"The fire --- ? Oh goddess, that sounds like something Rushie would say. Well its an hour past noon and you've slept too long as is. You need to get up."

He truly did not wish to. If they would go away, draw the drapes, shut the door and leave him in darkness he would almost be happy.

"We need to get somebody in here to mop up the water. Oh, I do hope the carpet isn't ruined." Yoko was saying. He heard the other women moving about the room. The doors of the armoire opened. "Look, Keitlan has laid out something to wear for you. Keitlan has your tailor in town working on more."

Even with the lassitude he had to ask. "What, prey tell, happened to all my clothes?"

A moment of silence. He moved his arm slightly to see if she were still there. She smiled a little guiltily and shrugged. "Rushie sort of burned them all -- for a spell."

"He burned -- my clothes?"

"It was for a good cause."

The maids were looking at him with round eyes, shifting from foot to foot in cold standing water.

"Get out." He said softly and the two girls started and scattered like rabbits. Keitlan gave him a dour look before following after them. Yoko eyed him a moment longer.

"Are you going to be okay? You were really unsteady last night. I can get somebody to help - - ?"

"No."

"I can get Rushie --"

"No!" More emphatically.

"Okay, but if you don't make some effort to get up I'm going to send him after you anyway." With that threat, she left, shutting the door in her wake. He found himself glaring at the door, thinking bad things about her. But the threat was enough to stir him into taking notice in what the maids had brought him. Plain, but fine material. No ornamentation, which suited his mood very well. He pulled on a pair of soft house boots -- Schneider had apparently not seen fit to burn all his footwear -- and slopped through the water on his floor to the door. His head still felt a little hazy. His balance was better. His knees did not feel as if they might crumble under him.

The water had seeped out into the hallway. It stained the long narrow rug that graced the stone floor. There was a maid and a boy with a bucket and mop coming up the hall now. They bowed their heads respectfully at him as he stood undecided outside his doorway. They stood a few feet away, looking nervous, even a little frightened, blocked from their destination, which was obviously his room, by his presence.

He moved down the hall, spurred by their anxious stares. Found himself in his study, which was another haven. He shut the door behind him and tried to find the peace that had always come to him in this room, filled with so many years of avid collecting. It would not come. Disquietude came instead. His interest in the arcane, all the trappings of the dark magics, the superstitions, all the things that grandfather had preached against. All the things that he had taken up like a crusade once he realized that with power came the ability to banish all the people that condemned him. Even if it meant cutting a swath of death behind him as he went. How many people dead? He had no earthly idea.

_You should never have been born. Your death will absolve her sin._ His head spun with the notion. _Sinner. Sinner. Sinner._ Flashes of pain and he pressed his palms into his eyes. Shame. A loss of dignity that could never be recovered. _ Do you want to die? Yes. _

"My Lord?" Keitlan's voice from outside the door. She babbled something about breakfast. He couldn't listen to her. He jerked the door open and brushed past her startled face. Down the hall towards the tower stairs because the walls were a constraint that he could not tolerate. He needed to see sky above him. Limitless, uncondemning sky. She called after him. All he heard was the unintelligible sound of a voice raised in concern. The words made no sense. The ones in his head hammered at him ruthlessly.

Up the narrow stairs and he was winded by the time he'd reached the top. The sky loomed above, scattered clouds marring the blue depths of firmament. The wind made small whistling sounds. There was a dark stained pattern on the stones of the floor, worn away in places so that it was not recognizable. A[][1] faint smear of black in the center as if something had burned long and hard there. He went to the side away from the city, leaned on the bulwark and looked out upon fields where snow was slowly melting at the onslaught of spring. When had spring come upon the north? He didn't remember. The snow was mostly gone in the distant, rocky trench that rested below the tower. It only broke the brown of rocks and earth in patches. He saw her body after he'd destroyed her. Broken and bloody. Not recognizable as Mother any more. He heard their voices and saw their stares and he believed them. He'd always believed them, deep down -- only now it hurt too much to deny. He was too tired to fight it. It would be easier just to wish it all away.

He found himself on the thick stone of the battlement. The wind whipped his shirt against his back, his hair into his eyes. He put a hand on the stone on either side of him, just a careful touch of fingertips to granite. The rocks were tiny beads scattered among the vestiges of snow so very far below.

He simply stepped off the edge.

[NEXT][2]

   [1]: suicide.htm
   [2]: aftermath51.htm



	51. Chapter 51

aftermath51

Fifty-one

The world rushed past. A blurred, detached place that held no more allure. Falling. Falling. Falling. Avoid the instinctive urge to summon a wind to support his body and slow the descent. A hard, fast impact to bring eternal oblivion and one could only hope malicious magic would not defy his desire and force him back.

A breath and there was impact, but not of the expected sort. Something crashed into him from the side, bore him into the tower wall with enough force to know the wind out of out him, holding him tightly enough to keep him from gaining it back.

"Nononono." He wailed in dismay. The voices cried out in chagrin.

"Fucking, stupid, idiotic moron!" Irate, oh so irate voice yelling in his ear. He struggled against the hold mindlessly, like an animal trying to escape a snare by gnawing through its own leg. It didn't occur to him to use magic, he had gone so long without having it as a resource to fight back with. An arm tightened around him, fingers tangled in his hair and jerked his head back so hard the bones in his neck protested. It brought to mind the Prophet's habits and the frustrated desire to escape turned to panic.

But it wasn't Angelo's eyes glaring at him, it was Schneider's. There was just as much fury in the gaze though. "What the fuck are you doing?!"

Kall felt tears gathering in his lashes and didn't know if it was disappointment, fury or fear. "Damn you. Damn you. Let me alone!!"

Thirty feet above the earth. So close.

"Like hell!" Schneider yelled at him. The winds buffered them upwards. It was unfair. So unfair. He struggled madly against the embrace, but his strength had abandoned him some undefined time ago and all he did was make Schneider mad enough to shove him backwards when he had brought the both of them back up to the tower roof. Kall-Su sprawled, embarrassed and miserable, desperate to follow the whispers in his head.

"Why can't you ever just leave me alone?" he cried.

"Are you insane? Did he push you that far over the edge? What the fuck do you think you're doing? You want to die?"

"Yes!" He cried back and Schneider lunged down and grabbed him by the tunic, face dark in anger. He thought he would hit him and he cringed. He couldn't help it. He couldn't even hate himself for the show of weakness. Schneider's lip curled in disgust and he let go of him.

"Too damn bad. It's not going to happen."

The desire to curl up and cry was replaced of a sudden by indignation and something halfway bordering on hate. "You arrogant bastard. What do you care?

Since when has it mattered what happened to me as long as it didn't interfere with your convenience? You stopped having a use for me a long time ago, so why bother?"

"You little shit." Schneider leaned so close Kall could feel the whisper of his breath on his skin. His eyes were almost indigo with anger. "That's a good goddamned question. If you want to throw away your life, why the hell should I bother to stop you? Except that I spent too many years making you into what you are and I hate to waste my time."

"Well you did. I didn't deserve it. I shouldn't have ever been born. I killed her. She went to hell because of me. She was right. They were all right."

"What, that spineless bitch who birthed you? God, you're not tearing yourself up over that again? They were self righteous, ignorant fools and your beloved mother was the biggest one of all."

"Don't say that!" Kall cried. "She was the only person who ever cared about me. She didn't drown me at birth because she loved me."

"She didn't drown you at birth because she was greedy and weak and she probably thrived on the attention of being the woman who slept with a demon -- or whatever the hell it really was. If she'd had really cared she would have gotten you the hell out of that place and gone somewhere to escape the ridicule."

"Shut up. You don't know anything. You don't understand."

"I understand Angelo fucked you up. I understand he knew exactly what buttons to push to crack you. You know what he needed of you, Kall? Have you figured that out yet?"

He didn't want to talk about Angelo. He did not want to think about those memories/ sensations / violations. They lurked too close to the surface already.

"He wanted your power. He wanted your body as a host. I told you how he's survived all these years, but did I tell you how he does it? He can't just move in and take up residence. He had to break you so badly you wanted to die. Just give up and welcome death so he could move in without a struggle. He did it didn't he? Got you so badly that you want to finish the job he started."

"You don't understand." He couldn't think straight. He refused to accept that the turmoil in his head was a thing perpetrated upon him and not the result of his own guilt's. He refused to believe he was that malleable. He shook his head and repeated it over and over. Covered his eyes with his hands to shut out the peaceful sky, Schneider, everything.

"She said -- she said that as long as I lived, her sin could not be absolved."

"How do you know she did? How do you know Angelo didn't put it in your head?"

He didn't know. He couldn't separate reality from the dreams anymore. He bent over his knees and silently wept, hating himself. Schneider cursed under his breath, caught him up and pulled him against him. Sat there in the center of the tower roof holding him while reaction racked his body.

"Goddamnit Kall, you're better than this. Whatever demons you have swimming around in your head -- he put them there. Don't let him win."

Schneider was always so sure in his assumptions. Always so damned tenacious in the ways he thought things should be. It was so hard to argue with someone who never backed down and who never believed they could be wrong. Even when the things he was saying might be the means to a salvation that did not involve being broken before a cross dedicated to god.

"I'm not you. I can't wash away the sins and pretend they were never there."

"Do I do that?" There was an actual hint of curiosity in Schneider's voice. Kall couldn't answer.

"Well, maybe I do. Maybe I don't. Who's to say what sin is? Angelo? I don't think so. Geo Note and his self righteous flock of clerics who pretend to know what the gods want? I can tell you that I've met some of their vaunted _angels_ and they're not so steeped in purity. You want to know who I measure my sins by? Yoko. The look in her eyes. You. Arshes and even that clod Gara. Nobody else matters. What do I care what the multitudes think? That I'm doing what the rest of the world thinks is morally acceptable or not? We're not on their level. No matter how low you want to sink to wallow in your precious guilt -- you'll never be on their level. Find something to venerate if you have to, but don't let it be Angelo's lies, or the church or any of the twisted things your misbegotten family told you."

The words dried up. It was probably the most philosophical thing he'd ever heard from Schneider. Probably the most ideological. He was drained and confused. The desire to die was not so strong now as the one to just forget.

It began to rain. A light, early spring pattering of droplets on the stone. It would wash away more of the already fading snow. Northern fields would already have been broken in anticipation of the brief planting and harvest season that graced the cold region. Tilled weeks ago while he was --- gone.

Schneider was getting up, pulling him to his feet after him. He kept his fingers around Kall's arm. "I'm not getting soaked up here. C'mon."

There was no room for argument with either the tone or the grip on his arm. It was a long, dark climb down. It had been easier going up. His knees hadn't been so shaky then. He put a hand to the wall and hesitated, light-headed. Schneider hovered over his shoulder.

"Pull it together, Kall. I'm not carrying you down these stairs a second time."

Kall-Su was somewhat surprised to hear he had done it a first time. He waved a hand and murmured. "I'm okay."

"Umm Hummm. Right."

He took a breath and continued down. It occurred to him to ask, because he had not absorbed everything Yoko had said when he'd brought up the subject to her.

"You burned all my clothes --- exactly why again?"

"He's going to freak out when he finds out." Gara met Arshes Nei's onslaught of steel and repelled it, pushing her back a few feet on the hard earth of the practice ground. She bared her teeth and shifted her stance.

"Your left side is open." He remarked off handedly and she frowned, moving her blade a little to compensate. He made a pass for the weak spot anyway and she only barely managed to block it. "Told you."

"You didn't get through my defense, did you? And he already suspects. He said as much the night we got Kall-Su back."

"Suspicion and sure knowledge are totally different things, Arshes."

"He's been preoccupied lately."

"As if anyone hasn't. He's going to freak out."

She lowered her sword and stared at him. "Gara. Are you afraid?"

"Well I'd be a fool if I said I wasn't a little worried. Its not like he's the blacksmith down the street who's a little jealous over the wench he's been rolling around in the hay with for the last century."

"You are not calling me a wench." Both her brows shot up. Gara couldn't hold back a grin.

"You are the most magnificent wench alive -- and he's possessive and nasty tempered when other people play with his toys."

"I resent being called a wench and a toy in the same sentence. And I don't care what he thinks."

"You don't care if he blasts me into itty bitty pieces of charred ninja?"

"He and I would have some very terse words if that happened."

"Oh, well that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Terse words, huh?"

There was a far off rumble of thunder. As if on cue it started to rain. Gara sighed and rested his practice blade across his shoulder. So much for practice. Not that they had gotten a lot of it done, in-between the verbal sparring. She proceeded him to the practice shed and put up her blade. She turned to him while he was placing his in its place and put her hand on his face. Her fingers touched the scar running down from his eye and across his cheek.

"I think you were right when you said I deserved this. I think he will learn to deal with it or he and I will be at odds."

"And you don't want that." It was a statement, not a question.

"No."

"Because you love him." Another statement.

"Of course. But my heart has been withered for such a long time, is it not possible for it to hold love for more than one man?"

She was so damned pragmatic when it suited her. "I'd be a fool if I said no, wouldn't I?"

She smiled at him. Trailed her fingers down his face and across his chest, then turned and walked into the rain towards the castle. Gara took a deep breath to still the blood flowing recklessly to sensitive parts of his anatomy. All it took was a smile and a touch both of which held promises of things he'd only dreamed about for years and never, ever thought to have.

The cold rain cooled him off with chilling efficiency. He pounded up the steps and into the main hall. Arshes was already approaching the hearth where there was stew kept warm over the coals and mulled cider to chase away the still very chill weather. The hall was mostly empty, being afternoon and most of the servants busy with their day's tasks. Yoko was there, hovering over the shoulder of a maid that was patching a pile of uniforms. The same girl, he thought, from the fall of straight dark hair that they had saved from the Prophet's mountain fortress. He hadn't seen her since that night on the tower. He'd forgotten about her quite honestly, though he really ought not have, considering she'd endangered her own life to try and help Kall and himself when the fortress had been falling down around their ears. Arshes' private welcome back had driven most everything else out of his head. It looked as if the girl had been taken care of though. If Yoko had taken an interest, then she was sure to be treated fairly. Slave mark or no.

"Hello, little girl. You're looking good today."

Yoko glanced up at him. The dark haired girl did, but looked quickly away. Shy or taught by her various owners never to look a free man in the eyes. Some men took great pleasure in dehumanizing their possessions. He rather hoped it was the former, for the girl had too much courage to have been mistreated so badly.

"Well, hello Gara." Yoko smiled at him. "You're wet."

"Its raining."

"Ah, that would do it."

He wanted to ask the slave girl how she was getting along here, but the clamor of boot heels on the floor warned of a rapidly approaching disturbance. Schneider stalked across the hall towards them, showing signs of dampness himself, looking mightily pissed off about something. Gara felt his stomach tighten and wished he'd thought to bring the Murasume to practice. One really ought to carry it around when one was dallying with a woman a very powerful wizard considered his property. He stopped a few feet away and beckoned them over with a sharp wave of his hand.

"Arshes." He called to her and she warily put down the cup of cider she'd drawn and approached.

"What's wrong?" Yoko asked, eyes wide with apprehension.

"Kall just tried to kill himself. I don't trust him and I don't want him left alone until he gets his sense back."

They all gaped at him. Yoko put a hand over her mouth in dismay.

"You're not serious? What in hell did he do?" Gara demanded.

"It doesn't matter. Just keep an eye on him. Its got to be us because nobody else here could stop him if he really wanted to do something stupid."

They moved further away, conferring among themselves out of Lily's hearing. But she had overheard enough to make her bit her lip in anxiety. Her fingers were frozen on the material she mended. Days had passed and she had strained to hear even a rumor of him and now this disheartening news. They wouldn't understand, the powerful, the infallible lords who dominated this place. They could plan wars against the master -- the Prophet till the day grew long and never truly know how overwhelming -- how inevitable the power of his will was. He had never lifted a hand to strike her, never hurt her in a physical fashion or gone to great lengths to destroy her will -- she had never given him cause -- but she still had nightmares about him. She still woke sweating in the darkness of this place where people laughed and lived without fear, afraid that he might catch her at this game of freedom she engaged in. She could imagine what _he_ endured, having been the center of the Master's obsession. They all seemed surprised, as if being a great lord or a powerful wizard could make one just shrug off the wounds.

But who was she to tell them. They had forgotten her, save for Yoko, who seemed to think she was a cause to be taken up. She thought Yoko took up a great many causes. Her charity was widespread and selfless, even when it made the reciprocates uncomfortable. Lily liked her very much, but she was not used to having people go out of their way to be kind to her. To look after her well-being. She kept expecting it to end suddenly -- and herself thrust back into slavery. She had coin in her pocket. She'd never had coin in her life of her own. She didn't know what she might do with it. Save it, she thought to buy an instrument, though the desire to go to market and spend it wildly and thoughtlessly on trinkets and sweetmeats was overpowering. Yoko had offered to go with her that very morning, when Mistress Keitlan had handed her the few coins for her work. She had almost agreed, even though it was disconcerting to imagine herself guided through this northern city by a lady of some position. She hardly had the taste for it now, depressed by what she had overheard. The only consolation was the surety that they would protect him, even against himself. They had brought down the place without windows and beaten the Master to that end. Yoko's wizard had, who glowered and glared and stomped about threateningly, but was fiercely protective of his inner group of confidants. She had overheard some of the servants whispering that he had raised the lord Kall-Su and the Elvin Lady Arshes Nei. Lily hardly saw how that was possible, him looking little older than the two of them. However, the appearance of wizardly things was not to be trusted.

But it was not her concern. None of it was her business. With a shuddery sigh she forced her fingers back to work. But her mind kept wondering.

Kall-Su looked distracted, eyes filled with vague preoccupation. It was better than desolation. Much, much preferable to the look he'd had on the tower. Schneider sat in a high backed chair, swirling the remnants of a red wine about the bottom of a wooden goblet while Kall-Su drifted about the walls of his library, running his fingers lightly across the spines of his books. He didn't speak. Just occasionally pulled a book out and placed it elsewhere. If he noticed various damages or missing volumes he did not mention it out loud.

Schneider finished the wine and sat with his chin propped on his hand, staring out the window. Since Kall was uncommunicative, his mind wondered to other things. Yoko entertained his thoughts for a while, in various positions and states of undress. But it was a frustrating fantasy since he couldn't predict when it would come to fruition. Which brought to mind the reason for her present uncertainty. The baby and the man that had forced her to loose it. He ground his teeth, knowing he would only make himself crazy thinking about the Prophet possibly still alive and out there somewhere plotting against him. So he thought about that damned old fortress and its very powerful wards. He would very much like to discover its location. Very much like to scout those ruins.

"Did you ever have a hint where it was? Angelo's fortress?"

Kall slowly turned pale blue eyes his way. Expressionless, detached eyes that blinked once, then flickered back to the shelves. "No."

"How'd you get there?"

"I don't know." He didn't turn this time, his back was very straight. Schneider didn't think he was actually seeing the books anymore. "I just -- woke up there. There were no windows."

"Oh, but there were wards. Very strong wards."

"I'm aware."

Schneider lifted a brow. "I imagine you are. What -- did he do to you?" He had a curiosity, whether as a fuel for his fire of vengeance or merely the need to know, he couldn't say.

"Does it matter? We know the results, do we not?" Kall's voice had gone brittle and imperious, some fraction of the icy facade he always wore forming in reflexive protection.

Schneider didn't push it, even though he wanted to. "I just wish I'd seen his body. I want to find that fortress."

"It was destroyed completely?" A glance over a shoulder. Some small bit of interest creeping past the attempt to distance himself from talking of Angelo and the ordeal.

"Pretty much. Last I saw the walls were falling down before the spell snapped us back."

"What about the acolytes? Could they have escaped?"

Schneider sniffed. "Nobody that was in that pile of stones got out alive."

"Oh." Kall stared at him, then shifted his gaze back to the books. Schneider was interested enough in his reactions to catch the brief flicker of pain that crossed his face.

"Why?"

"Nothing. It doesn't matter." A long pause. He found a misplaced book and took it down, stood staring at the words on the spine for a long moment before murmuring softly. "There was a girl."

"A girl? One of his priestess'?"

"No. Just a slave. It doesn't matter."

Oh, interesting. Very interesting. "Hummm. Maybe the slave girl we got out with us knows of her."

Kall looked at him, with much the expression of a man who thinks he's being toyed with. Schneider spun the goblet between his fingers, waiting. Kall broke the stare first and searched for the place the book belonged. It took him a while to find it.

"What was this slave girl's name?" Schneider asked pleasantly.

"I don't know. She tried to help me. I told you it was of no import."

"Well the one we brought back is called Lily and she's foul tempered and disrespectful. Your housemistress gave her a job in the laundry."

Kall didn't reply, apparently finished talking on the subject. After a while, when he'd wondered around the shelves for long enough he asked. "Was it you that put my books in such disarray?"

"Don't complain. It got you back."

"How long do you plan on dogging my footsteps?" Quieter this time.

"Until Gara comes up and takes my place." He smiled. Kall looked at him unhappily. "I wasn't the one who tried to smash himself upon the rocks. So you _will_ endure it until I think there's no further need."

"There isn't."

"You lost the right to make that call when you stepped off the battlements. Earn it back."

Kall's eyes flashed indignation. "I do not need your protection. I am not your disciple anymore."

"No? I think you do. Otherwise Angelo wouldn't have taken you so goddamned easy."

Kall opened his mouth, snapped it shut. Stalked to the door and snatched it open intent on fleeing who the hell knew where. Gara stood there with his hand raised to knock and an idiotic grin on his broad face.

"Well there you are. I was looking ---"

"You're late." Schneider remarked. Gara had what looked like a bit on the side of his mouth and a sort of bemused expression in his eyes.

"What the hell happened to you?" In the back of his mind it occurred to him that Arshes had the tendency to bite when overexcited.

"Um -- just a little roughhousing in the practice yard."

"Really? With anyone I'd know?"

Gara blushed. It looked ridiculous on the Ninja Master. Schneider wondered if he ought to kill him now or wait until later. If he killed him now it meant he'd have to spend the rest of the night baby-sitting Kall.

Kall-Su glared at the both of them and brushed past Gara. The ninja shrugged nervously, gestured after Kall-Su and disappeared after him.

Schneider sat simmering, thinking about all the little things that had been going on between Gara and Arshes lately. All the things he had been too busy to notice. The goblet went up in flames. He dropped it carelessly on the floor and watched it burn. It left a pile of ashes and blackened burned place on the carpet.

"Shit." He stared at the spot. Yoko had a thing about the castle carpets. She would pitch a fit if she found out. He pulled the chair forward to cover it.

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   [1]: aftermath52.htm



	52. Chapter 52

aftermath52

Fifty-two

Yoko was melancholy, even though she tried to put a cheerful face on to the world at large. She had gone long enough scaring everyone senseless with her dementia that she felt it her duty to make up for it. She recalled some of that time, but not all. It seemed such a surreal, drifting existence where faces came and went but nothing anyone did or said held enough impact to scar her memory. She sat in her room, brushing her hair, mindlessly letting the soothing rhythm of strokes bring her peace. The fire warmed the air. The smell of winter dried flowers she had bought at market was a subtle perfume.

The handle of her door turned without the benefit of a polite knock to request entry. Schneider stood there, looking sullen and brooding.

"Still awake."

She arched a brow at the statement and finished the stroke she had begun when he'd opened her door. "Is there something you want in my room at this hour?" she asked tartly. She expected a leer or a lecherous suggestion. He frowned instead.

"What's wrong now?" she demanded warily.

"Nothing." He almost spat the word, then stepped inside, shutting the door behind him and stalked over to stand before her fire, his hands on the thick mantel over it.

"Oh, don't even come in here with that look on your face and say nothing's wrong. Is Kall okay?"

"Fine."

She put the brush down and glared at his back. "If you're going to just stand there sulking and not tell me what's wrong, then you can just leave right now. I've got better things to do."

He glanced over his shoulder at her, eyes cold and angry beneath half lowered lashes. He pushed off from the mantel and swept past her, apparently willing to follow her terms. He was blatantly insane if he thought he could prick her curiosity and just walk away.

"Oh no you don't." She jumped out of her chair and caught his arm. He stopped. Tense and rigid. He most certainly could have ripped out of her grasp without breaking stride. He was angry. Angry angry. Not worried angry like he'd been over Kall-Su for the last few days, but more the venomous, dearly wanted to kill something anger that took him from time to time. She thought if she'd had a brain in her head she would have been wary of him with that look on his face, but she generally was senseless when it came to him.

"Rushie, tell me what's happened? Something to do with Angelo?"

He hissed at that name. Tossed his head to shake the hair out of his eyes and snarled.

"Its Gara. That boundless, conniving whoreson. He's fucking Arshes."

She took a breath at the bluntness. "Oh. That. Well its been building for years now."

His eyes got big with shock a moment before they narrowed into slits of soul searing accusation. "**_What?_** "

"Oh everyone knew it. You can even ask Kall. Gara's loved her for the longest time. She was just too busy mooning over you to realize how much healthier he was for her. She's much better off with him, if you want my opinion." She smiled at him sweetly. One had to admit to being a tad bit prejudiced on the subject, even though she was terribly satisfied with how happy Gara had been acting the last few days. She had noticed it right off.

Schneider glared at her like he wanted her dead. Jerked his arm out of her grasp and teetered between stalking out of the room and strangling her.

"That son of a bitch!" he settled for spitting. "He knew she was mine and he dares to lay a finger on her."

"Yours?" Yoko's anger began to flare up. It began to burn rather nicely in the pit of her stomach. "What is it with you and thinking you own people? Does anybody here wear a slave mark?" She thrust her hand up before his eyes. Then balled it into a fist and shook it at him. "I don't ever recall seeing one on Arshes. Or Kall -- but you seem to think we're all property."

"Would you like one?" he hissed back at her.

She stomped her foot in frustration. "Ohhhh, you make me so mad sometimes. You are so arrogant. And remember that little speech you gave me when you chased me down here? Remember that, you possessive, annoying ass? What the hell does it matter if he's sleeping with her? You won't be doing it yourself, or was that just a convenient little lie to get me to forgive you. Or is it merely that since you had her no one else can?"

"He betrayed me." Quiet simmering anger. But she could see in his face that he remembered very well what he had said.

"He did not. He never would have acted at all if you hadn't been gone all that time. Even then all he wanted was that she be happy. He cares more about her well being than his own. Can you say the same? It has nothing to do with you, Rushie. Not everything does. Can't you see that? And if you even lay a finger on him, I swear I will make you regret it so badly."

"Don't threaten me." He said darkly.

"Or what?"

He glared at her silently. Turned on his heel to leave. Oh, not so easy to escape a discussion not to his liking -- not when she was so ready to take it on. She reached out and caught a handful of his hair. He hissed when it yanked against his scalp and brought a hand up to rub the spot, glaring daggers at her.

"Yoko." Warning tone. She ignored it and wound the thick lock around her hand twice to keep hold of it

"No. Not until you promise me no violence against Gara."

"No."

"You will so. He's your friend."

He refused to respond to that. Foolish, foolish man. But there was some bit of hurt underneath the anger in his eyes. Some sense of the betrayal he felt that goaded this black mood. That was the heart of the matter after all, that someone he did consider a friend and an ally had transgressed against him. The anger made her mad. The jealousy made her want to hit him. That little spark of pain -- oh that made her want to do something altogether else.

She pulled on the hair, lifted herself up to her toes and kissed him. He was so surprised at the move he pulled back, but she had hold of his hair so he didn't get far before she wrapped the other arm around his neck and molded herself against him. She felt reckless and daring, and her heart beat as rapidly with agitation as his did. Brazenly she plunged her tongue into his mouth, felt him respond with quickly awakening fervor. Felt it in the hardness between his legs that pressed against her stomach. She had power, she realized of a sudden. A great deal of power that she had always chosen not to use. From the day he had come back from his fifteen year slumber something about her had held sway over him. Something about her always had drawn him like a moth to her flame. And for one reason or another, from fear, from anger, from some silly ideal of honor, she never used it.

"Promise me." She broke the kiss, pulled back just far enough so that she could see his eyes. The anger had been replaced by a smoky haze of craving. His hands pressed against her back. She could feel the individual indention's of his fingers through the material of her nightrobe and gown. He leaned in towards her to reestablish the kiss, but she pulled back on his hair, not willing to continue until she got an answer. A vow that she felt confident he would not break if she could just get him to make it.

"No." With a stubbornness that refused to be leashed or reasoned with.

"Why?" She breathed it against his neck, teasing the skin below his jaw. His fingers tightened on her back, ran down the curve of her hip to press her closer against him.

"I thought you weren't ready?" He said against her ear.

"Maybe I'm still not. It depends on how much you inspire me with your altruism. That sort of thing just makes me all tingly, you know."

He half laughed, lifted her off her feet and backed her the few feet that separated them from the bed. Controlled fall, with him on top and his hands keeping his weight from hurting her. "Then why the hell are you with me?"

His hair fell down around her face, creating a veil that shut out the rest of the world. Everything but his intense eyes. She trembled, felt her recklessness diminishing and fought to shore it back up. He could wrest control from her so very easily if she let him. "Because every once and a while you surprise me. Benevolence is no big thing for a humble man, but when you do it -- it means more."

She trailed her fingers down his ribs and around his back, drawing him closer.

"Just let them be happy. It won't kill you. You have other things to worry about."

"So this is a bribe?"

"No."

He arched a brow at her dubiously. "A reward for my good behavior? What would your father think?"

"Oohhh." That was not the most political thing to bring up, what with Father sleeping not too far away. She pushed at his chest and he rolled off to lay beside her. She propped herself up to glare down at him. "He'd think I was a brazen hussy, is what. I ought to kick you out right now."

"If you weren't a brazen hussy?"

"What are you going to do, Rushie?"

"What do you want me to do, throw them a banquet?"

"That would be nice."

"Hah! In your dreams."

"Rushie!"

"I'll think about it."

Oh, sweet victory. She could taste it. She bent over and kissed him. His fingers pulled at the ties at the neck of her nightgown. She gave in to the recklessness. Elation surged with the surrender, as she realized how very much she wanted this. Him. The bargain -- bribe -- reward was a convenient excuse to overcome inhibitions created of fear and betrayal. And she had an edge now. A knowledge and will to use it that had been lacking before Angelo had hurt her and taken her baby. There was something inside her that was a little fiercer than it had been. Something willing to find an advantage and use it. Perhaps it made her a little more able to deal with him, because Goddess knew he was hard to handle under the best of circumstances. A little more on equal footing, emotionally. Not hard, but willing to make hard choices. This one she made because she wanted him -- loved him -- and thought it might sway him away from violence. And in the back of her mind a little voice cried, fool, fool, he'll only hurt you again. But the new, harder part of her calmly stated that if he betrayed her again -- there would be no further chance at redemption.

Another handful of coins to join her small treasury and Lily felt wealthy beyond her dreams. She went into town with one of the kitchen girls, Setha to fetch a list of supplies the old woman who ran the kitchen needed. It was the first time she had stepped out of the castle grounds. The city of Sta-Veron was surprisingly well tended after a long winter. The girl Setha chattered incessantly, spreading gossip about the various outstanding citizens, pointing out landmarks, telling of the cities history. Conquered by its present lord many years past, it prospered more now than it ever had.

How many years?

She shivered when Setha told her. Longer than she'd been alive. Setha whispered things about wizards and immortality that Lily had no wish to hear. She tried to concentrate on other things. Setha wanted to stop and buy a sweetmeat and she found that an alluring distraction. She gave over one of her coins and got a handful of copper and a sticky sweet pastry sprinkled with nuts in return. They sat on a stone wall outside a tavern and consumed them, licking their fingers of sugar and honey. The sounds of music from inside drew Lily's attention. She peered in the door while Setha flirted with a passing merchant. Three musicians played by the fire. A rustic, overused tune, but the common folk here seemed to find it pleasing. She watched them, her fingers itching to touch the strings of her own lost instrument. She wanted to go and talk with them, to discover if they lived here in Sta-Veron or traveled with some troupe. Most minstrel's roamed far and wide, hearing and seeing everything. Absorbing all the facets of history to make into song. Oh, to have the freedom to do that. To wonder where she might with no hand to sway her path. Freedom. She would go now, if she knew how to cross the mountains. If she had the money to buy a lyre. If she did not have the slave mark on her hand that would make her victim to any who chose to force the issue.

Setha pulled her away from the tavern door with the lighthearted comment that she had made a assignation for later with the merchant she'd been talking with and wanted to get back to the castle and finish her work so she might make it. They picked up Cook's supplies and walked back to the castle with the burdens. Thyren, who was the laundry mistress, hailed her as soon as she stepped foot back within the kitchen courtyard, wanting help hanging out the linens. All the sheets and bedclothes that needed washing that week were wrung out in wet lumps waiting to be hung from the lines that stretched across the kitchen court. The lines were liken to sails, so full of billowing white sheets were they. It took the two of them to stretch the sheets out and clip them to the lines without the hems dragging in the dirt of the yard. Thyren worked silently. Her face was a perpetual frown. The quiet was a pleasant exchange for Setha's meaningless chatter.

Then Thyren looked up from the sheet she was clipping to a line and widened her eyes in surprise. She didn't say a thing, just looked past Lily's shoulder as if an angel had touched earth in the kitchen court. Lily turned. Her breath caught in her throat. He stood there, just outside the kitchen door, as out of place here in the mud covered kitchen yard as any angel would have been. He hesitated, eyes drifting about the yard, focusing finally, almost uncertainly upon the rows of laundry lines. Lily's heart hammered in her chest. Embarrassment, fear, shame churned in her stomach. She lowered her head so that her hair might fall into her face, an insubstantial shield that she had always used to protect herself. She could still see out, beyond the fall of dark strands. Could still him, walking towards her, pale and fair in the sunlight. Goddess, she had wondered what it would be like to see him in the sun. He took her breath away and she was mortified for that too, that she should assess him as if he were on her own level. A few of the kitchen maids looked out the door, intensely curious. The dark skinned, elvin lady loitered just outside the kitchen door, looking bored and restless.

He stopped a few feet from her, staring at her as if he were trying to ascertain whether she were familiar or not. There was a certain disassociation in his gaze, as if his mind were not fully connected to what his body did.

"M-my lord." She stammered it out. She heard Thyren murmur something of a similar nature from behind her. Clarity returned to his eyes. She could almost see the change as the focus sharpened. Still wounded, she thought, but fighting it. Oh, she had wanted to see him so badly since she had been brought here, but now she realized that while she was the same slavegirl who had dwelled in the place without windows, he was no longer the same man the Master had held prisoned. She wanted to flee. His standing in this muddy yard was so wrong. She couldn't stand it. She could not reckon what he wanted of her.

"He said -- I thought it might be you -- " He spoke, incompletely, as if he could only force some of his thoughts out. He looked away from her, disconcerted and finished with a simple. "Thank you. Just -- thank you."

She didn't know how to respond. So she simply stared at him when she should have curtsied or given him his welcome or told him that he need not thank her at all, she had not done any of the things she had out of some need for gratitude. He looked down under her hidden gaze and his eyes drifted to her hand. To the blaring black tattoo that would mark her for life. He reached down and took her fingers. She was trembling so hard he had to have felt it. He stared at the tattoo and she stared, fascinated at the fringe of lowered lashes that half hid his eyes. She felt something in the air, something invasive and electric that had nothing to do with the erratic beat of her heart. Her skin tingled, hot and cold at the same time. Her hand in his seemed for a brief moment to be bathed in something liquid and cool. Reflexively she jerked it out of his grasp.

"You need never be enslaved again." He said softly, then turned and strode away from her, not towards the kitchen but around the side of the castle. The half-elf pushed herself off the wall and stared at Lily with dark, speculative eyes before sauntering after him. Lily tried to calm her breathing. Tried to gather her wits about her. She looked at her hand and almost her knees faltered under her. The skin was clear of blemish. Smooth and clean and unscarred, as if no mark had ever been placed there.

Lily didn't cry. It was so useless a practice. But wetness streaked down her cheeks now. She held the hand to her breast and Thyren came around the line to look at it, and gasped in awe. The kitchen maids came out and even old cook and they all clustered about to look at what their lord and master had done. Lily half heard their words. Half heard that Lord Kall-Su never set foot in the servant's domain, much less trudged through the mud to the laundry lines to converse with serving girls. They speculated that he was still not quite right from his _ordeal_ , as they called it. But they could never really know. No one could, that hadn't been there.

He had taken the slave mark away. She couldn't get past that miracle. He had taken her hand and given her the greatest gift anyone could ever had bestowed upon her. He had made her more than she was with a moment's concentration of magic and power that Lily could never comprehend. She couldn't make the tears stop, because he had sealed her fate. He had given her freedom and doomed her to misery in one stroke. How could even freedom compensate for the tragic fact that she loved him?

Somewhere along the lush western coast of the continent an old man woke from a ravaged fever. He lay in a burrow nestled out from the sand at the edge of the forest. He had lain there for many days. Weeks almost, while the ocean surged against the sand, endlessly eroding at the shore. His clothes were stiff from salt, his body curled into a fetal position, cramped and stringy as if all the vigor of his muscles had left him. His flesh was sunken and lined, hair tangled and streaked liberally with gray. Not the man he had been scant weeks ago. A man weakened and drained by the toll of too much power passing a vessel that was never intended to possess it.

He crawled to his knees weakly and wailed out his consternation. The birds in the trees fluttered nervously at his keening. Stolen. All had been stolen from him at the last instant. Unfair. The god laughed at him for his failure. The god punished the weak. But it was so unjust. He had served so faithfully, for so many years.

Why? Why? He screamed out. But there was no answer from above. Only the sound of the ocean. To hell with god then, he seethed. That god had never lent him a physical hand anyway.

He stretched power that was weak and strained, feeling after the great solidity that was his asylum and found only the seeping wreck of the wards. The flavor of calamity and destruction. His doing that. A last, futile effort to obliterate the enemy. The work of centuries was nothing more than a crumbled wreck. But that archaic stone fortress was not truly the burrow that had served as his haven throughout the years of Ansasla's devastation. That place lay sheltered beneath the ruins. That place had withstood Ansasla itself, had withstood the nuclear and biological weapons frantic nations had launched in their misunderstood desperation.

He closed his eyes and called upon the homing ability of the sylph he had subsumed years past and pulled himself to that place. A blur of position. A moment of disorientation and the natural beauty of the beach was replaced by something altogether more sterile. Metal hallway lit by only the few remaining running lights along its walls that were still able to pull power from fading nuclear generators. Four centuries of dust coated floor and walls, marred only by the occasional set of footprints that marked his own seldom comings and goings from these passages. A fall out shelter of titanic proportions that had housed the elite of a dying world. The military, the politicians and the religious icons that held sway over the devotion of a people that would very soon mostly be dead. Almost it would have been a success, all that time ago, if the poison hadn't seeped in and taken out most of the people safeguarded within. The rest -- the rest had fallen victim to something else.

Stoop shouldered and limping, Angelino made his way down the seemingly endless array of corridors. He needed to rest. To regain what he could of his failing strength. His allies were gone. His faith in god shaken. His power diminished. All he had to rely upon now was his cunning and his resolve and the assurance of his enemy's arrogance.

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   [1]: aftermath53.htm



	53. Chapter 53

aftermath53

Fifty-three

"Where have you been?"

Arshes Nei pulled the chair back opposite Gara and settled into it. He already had a bottle of wine half consumed and his stomach rumbled eagerly for the meal he had been postponing till her arrival. They met at an inn in the east side of town. It was easier to get a private moment there without the sharp eyes and loose tongues of all the castle staff absorbing everything that went on within their domain. It was just a little safer to engage in an intimate moment without the danger of Schneider happening by and blowing Gara to bits. Even Arshes, despite her bravado, was just a little intimidated by thoughts Schneider's reaction to the fact that she was sharing Gara's bed. So better safe than sorry.

Arshes pulled of her gloves a finger at a time -- Gara was fascinated by the methodical way she accomplished it -- and lay the soft leather gloves beside her on the table top afterwards. Her hands were long fingered and slim, strong despite the fragile bone structure. She could wield a sword better than most men with those hands. He had bruises to prove it.

"Kall-Su proved particularly restless. He decided to go riding. All the way to the northern forest line and him woolgathering the entire time. More than likely Darshe was right in keeping an eye on him. I've known him to be lackadaisical on occasion -- mostly when we were younger -- but now -- I think he's just lost his focus and that's not like him."

"I can understand it. That much hurt can change a man."

She waved a hand, uncomfortable with the subject. "Well, here's an interesting tidbit. Before I got dragged out into the wilderness, he made a stop to see that little slave you brought back with you. He removed her slave tattoo."

Gara lifted a thick brow in surprise. "Really? I think she tried to help him out when he was there. She damn sure went to lengths when the place was falling down about our heads. Did he say anything about her to you?"

Arshes snorted. "He didn't say a word to me the whole afternoon."

"Hummm. Well, if she did try and help him I think she deserves more than a job in the laundry."

"What? Some reward?"

"It wouldn't hurt."

"You are so generous, Gara." She smiled lazily at him. A smile that promised so many different things. He thought of the room upstairs he had bought and paid for. The smells from the kitchen divided his attention. His stomach was a harsh mistress.

"And famished." He said mournfully. "I was waiting for you to have supper."

She laughed. "Ah, a man not ruled by his head -- or his _other_ head -- but by his stomach. How refreshing."

He gave her a dour stare. Not quite appreciating the off hand complement. Her laugh turned to a chuckle and she reached across the table to squeeze his fingers. "I'm so happy to have found you, Gara. Supper is a wonderful notion."

Supper was quickly consumed. And the hour's dalliance afterwards an ample dessert. Neither Gara nor Arshes Nei were much on lying about in too much indulgence though and were on their way soon after, walking through the dusk shrouded evening of Sta-Veron. They were both too seasoned and wry to hold hands like young lovers on an evening stroll, but they savored the company and the brushing of shoulders and he occasionally wrapped an arm about her waist just to feel the curve of her body against him, still amazed and flabbergasted that she allowed him to do it. That she allowed him to worship her in a way he heretofore only dreamed about.

They found their way back to the castle, the gate guard letting them pass with a nod and a word of greeting to Gara. Supper had already been served in the main hall and now only a few of the servants sat at the tables along the side of the hall taking a late supper. Gara thought he saw the girl from Angelo's fortress among them. He could only tell because with her head lowered, concentrating on her stew, her dark hair fell almost completely over her face. All he could seem to remember of her was that shield of falling hair. He touched Arshes' arm and motioned towards the girl. She nodded at him, and stood against the wall while he walked along the hall towards the girl.

Silence was second nature to him and he was standing behind the girl, Lily, was her name, he believed, without a single servant being aware of him. When he spoke they all started and looked back at him in shock. One of them made a religious sign against ghosts and the like and Gara smiled. Lily looked up at him warily and he could just see the large round orbs of dark eyes behind the hair. Pretty girl, he thought, if she'd only push the hair out of her face.

"A word, if you don't mind." He asked. The other girls at the table stared at her, curious and not a little envious. Twice in one day, he thought that this girl, a slave -- or a former slave, since her hand was now free of blemish drew the attention of the powers that be. He felt a little sorry for her, figuring she would be the object of multitudes of speculation as an aftermath.

Lily was thinking the same thing. She had already been questioned mercilessly about Kall-Su approaching her in the kitchen yard. Every servant in the castle was whispering about it. What had she done to warrant such a gift from their lord? How had she known him? What was it like to have such a magic performed on her person? A hundred questions about the Place Without Windows and her time there that they had not cared a whit about before she had been placed at the fore of their attention. A few wary ones about their lord, but not many. They feared to gossip too much about him. They feared him as much as they respected him and other than the mere fact that he was a wizard, Lily had yet to see why. She thought the silver haired one deserved much more fear, and the girls all giggled and blushed when _he_ was around, not afraid one bit. Well, unless Yoko was with him, then they all turned their eyes away and went about their business, but Lily thought that had more to do with Yoko than Schneider.

They were all somewhat put out with her that she would not answer more than a soft yes, or no. Or a simple refusal to speak of it at all. They thought her withdrawn and shy, which was probably better than thinking her contemptuous of their petty curiosity. In truth she was a little of both. Not comfortable talking with these outgoing women and most certainly uneasy with the thought of spreading things that were painful or dear to her heart for all to hear.

She bore their attention as she rose and meekly followed the Ninja Master along the wall, under the hanging tapestries and towards the quietly waiting figure of the elvin lady. Arshes Nei was her name. Lily had heard it said in the wake of Kall-Su's benediction of her. Her hand still tingled from the feel of the magic. Or perhaps it was merely from the touch of his fingers. She recalled the latter more clearly than the former. She could not quite erase the brief moment when his eyes had focused upon her. Oh, gods help her, but he was so beautiful, her whole afternoon had been spent daydreaming about him and all her practical self-advice had not been able to stop it.

"So, little girl -- Lily, isn't it?" Lord Gara looked down at her. Lily had to blink to regain composure and drive away thoughts of this hall's lord. One had to realize how silly she was being. Every girl in this hall had probably looked at him and had a fantasy or three and none of it would ever come to fruition. Only, he'd never trekked through the mud and removed a slave mark from any of them.

Gara was looking at her and she shook her head slightly in irritation at herself.

"Yes, my lord. Lily is my name."

"How long have you been a slave, Lily?" The elf asked.

Lily blinked at her. Close up the woman was exotically stunning. "As -- as long as I can remember, lady."

"What will you do, now that you no longer are?" The lady was blunt.

"I -- I don't know. My options are limited -- my lord. My lady."

Gara waved an impatient hand at the honorariums. "That's what we're here about. I know you helped out Kall-Su -- as much as you could at any rate -- while Angelo had him. It was a selfless thing to do. You deserve some repayment for your trouble."

She stared at him, not comprehending. "My trouble?"

"Ask for something and if it is within my power, I will see you get it. Little enough payment for the life of a friend."

The life of a friend. As if she had saved his life. As if she had done it expecting anything but punishment from the Master. Yet, they were asking and she could not quite stop from thinking of an answer. What sane person would not?

What did she want? Kall-Su, she thought. But one doubted they would give gifts of that extravagance. So she said the only other thing that came to her mind.

"A lyre. So I can play again."

"You're a minstrel?" the lady elf lifted a brow in curiosity. Lily nodded.

Gara shrugged. "All right. If that's what you want. I'll see that you get one."

"Thank you." She whispered it. Lady Nei turned away, finished with the conversation. Gara nodded his head once more, then patted her shoulder as if she were a favored hound who'd performed well. He even went so far as to say, before leaving her. "Good girl."

Lily almost laughed. She didn't know what else to do.

A wrapped package was waiting for her on her narrow cot in the room she shared with three other girls the next evening. She sat on the edge of the cot and held it over her knees for a long time before carefully unwrapping it. It was not a lyre, but a lute. Pear shaped body, graceful bent neck and fretted fingerboard. Used, she thought from the wear along the neck, but of good craftsmanship. She supposed it was the best they'd been able to do, in such a place as Sta-Veron, so far from the beaten track of civilization. The sounds were not quite as lyrical as those of the harplike lyre, but she supposed it was more practical for a traveling minstrel. Easier to swing over one's knee to play. More versatile in some of the bawdy songs the common folk preferred to hear. Alone in the room, she dared to run her fingers over the strings. A cascade of notes ensued. Almost perfectly tuned. She adjusted it until it was to her liking and realized as she finished that she was grinning broadly. Her face hurt from it, it had been so long since she'd had anything to smile about.

It was not so late, she thought, that she might not venture out into the city and find a willing audience to practice on. There was always a tavern full of patrons that might part with a coin or two for a song. She had plied enough of them with her various owners. She knew the profession well. She pulled her apron off, and hefted the instrument. She was almost down the stairs to the second level when Setha came tromping up.

"Ohh, what have you there?" the girl asked, eyeing the lute.

It was so plainly obvious that Lily did not offer an answer.

"Where'd you get that?"

That one was not so obvious and Lily thought it best to answer to avoid rampart speculation. "Lord Gara and Lady Arshes Nei."

"Really?" The girl looked surprised. "Well, where are you off with it?"

"I -- I thought to go into town and perhaps find a tavern keep willing to let me play a song or two."

"Ooohhh, are you good? I know a place. A beau of mine works there."

One could hardly find a better offer. She sighed and nodded. Setha grinned and scrambled up the stairs, calling over her shoulder. "Just be a minute. Have to make sure I look me best for all the available men about the town."

Yoko had decided that, yes, she preferred the act of lovemaking on a bed rather than on a pine needle covered ground. Sharp little sticks and burrs were such a distraction when one could be concentrating on so much more interesting things. The bed was very nice, she also found -- and this appalled her stridently devout sense of propriety to no ends -- that there were a variety of other places and positions that were equally thrilling. Rushie was so diligent a teacher and plainly ecstatic by her wholehearted foray into the education. She had a particular fondness, she had discovered, for being on top. She rather thought it was because it gave her some small portion of control and that was so hard to find with him. He hardly complained.

They had barely left her rooms for the last few days, save when he reluctantly drifted off to take his turn watching Kall-Su. When she went down to find a bite to eat, Keitlan gave her a worried look and asked if she were feeling sick.

Why no. Why do you ask?

And of course the woman remarked that she had been closeted in her room, not even coming down for dinner or lunch and what was the matter. Yoko blushed and couldn't quite come up with a thing to say until the old cook blurted out who else had been conspicuously absent during said meals. Keitlan's brows shot up, and she got a bit of a rosy blush herself, before hastily murmuring that a girl needed to eat if she were to keep her health. The cook said something a little more crass -- the old woman had an absolutely blatant obsession with Rushie. Yoko hurriedly took her bread and bowl of stew out into the hall to consume. While she was trying to fight the blush down -- her mind kept recalling what she had been doing before he had left her -- her father and his attendant priest came in from the main courtyard. Goddess, one just did not need to dwell on certain things when one's priestly father was approaching with a smile of greeting on his face.

"Yoko, you look well this morning." She lifted her cheek for a kiss of greeting.

"What have you been about so early?" she asked, knowing she sounded guilty. He did not seem to notice.

"There's a small temple at the edge of the city. The only one to Eno Marta in Sta-Veron. It sees little patronage, and its priest is an elderly man who can barely keep the maintenance up by himself. We've been helping him out."

"Trying to drum up business?" she asked wryly, then almost gasped at the sacrilegious flavor of the question. Rushie was getting to her in more ways than one. Geo Note lifted a brow, not offended and she smiled weakly.

"There are not a great deal of pious men this far north. To most of them the gods are little more than names to utter in a curse. But there are a few. So, I missed you at dinner last night. Were you well?"

Oh, he had to ask that. Learning a new trick, oh honored father. You'd be proud of me, goddess knows Rushie was impressed. She took a sip of cider and said. "I had a headache, so I stayed in."

Geo Note waved a hand and released his aide from duty to him. Then sat down beside her, folding his big hands on the table. She felt a certain amount of wariness at the serious look on his face.

"What is it?" she asked, never one to hold her tongue when curiosity beckoned.

"I feel I should return to Meta-Rikan soon. Trading convoys will be traveling south soon. I need to see the state of affairs. I've been derelict from my duty for too long."

"You haven't been here that long." She said. "Hardly more than a month."

"Too long, considering the situation. You should come with me."

She blinked at him in surprise. "Me? But Larz banned me from the city."

"Before he knew fully of the Prophet's deceptions. When I return I shall shed more light on the man's activities and we will convince him that your actions were just."

She bit her lip, torn. Thinking of all the warm memories of Meta-Rikan. All the childhood reminiscences that held a place in her heart. She had grown up in the cathedral dormitory. Had lived most of her life in the delicate gardens and ornate passages of the palace grounds and yet it seemed so distant now. So empty of the things that made a home feel like a home. This less refined, cold place was more of a home to her than she could convince herself that Meta-Rikan could ever be again. All the politics, all the posturing and the courtly intrigue -- none of it held the simple allure of being welcome in amongst the servants, sharing in all their gossip and simple ways -- of not having to bow and practice courtly manners, of not having to be wary not to offend the godly men who shared the dormitory with her less than godly ways. And of course Rushie wouldn't be there. Rushie would never be there because too much had passed. And Kall wouldn't and probably not Gara or Arshes, though the last two might not be as adamant about it. And without all the people she loved around her, she couldn't abide the thought of returning.

"I can't." She said softly. "Even if Larz welcomed me with open arms, I couldn't go back. Not to live there."

"Because of him?" Father said dourly, almost accusingly. "You have already come to harm because of him and I fear you will come to more."

"I can't hide all the time. I love you, Father. You know I do, but I've got other obligations now. Meta-Rikan does not hold my allegiance anymore. I would never wish it harm, but I've other priorities."

He sighed. His shoulders slumped slightly - in disappointment? -- Acceptance? She reached out and covered his large hand with her small one. Leaned against his shoulder.

"Papa. Please understand."

"I do, daughter. But, I had to ask."

Schneider was daydreaming in the window sill, one knee bent and resting against the glass the other leg dangling, boot almost brushing the floor. Kall-Su was flipping the pages of a disinterestedly. He had a stack of them sprawled across his desk and no one of them seemed to hold his attention. Schneider ignored him. Schneider was immersed in the rather lurid recollection of Yoko's lips and mouth performing the most erotic acts upon his person. For a novice she was mind numbingly talented. Or perhaps it was merely because it was _Yoko._ She had the rather amazing ability to drive him to distraction. Just thinking about it was enough to make his blood pound and he brought the dangling leg up to obscure the physical evidence.

Kall was looking at him with crystalline and very serious blue eyes. Schneider scowled, wondering if he was that obvious.

"What?" he snapped, not particularly liking being dragged out of his reverie. It had been a very nice two days. The best two days he could easily recall.

"You don't have to be here." Very soft, very level statement. "I wish that you would cease this."

Schneider lifted a brow, meeting Kall's eyes with shrew assessment. Nothing wild there. Nothing dangerous brewing under the surface. Sanity, even though it was touched with a certain lack of concentration. A certain tendency to drift away in the midst of a line of thought, which was most patently not a trait Kall-Su had ever evidenced before this. But it was not a self-destructive one.

Kall broke the stare first, looking away to hide whatever emotion flickered across his eyes. But that was nothing new. Schneider had always been able to stare him down and Kall had always tried to hide the disquiet that he could so regularly do it. But he wasn't sure. He had just gotten things under control to a degree. Everything that mattered was safe and mostly sane and he was skittish enough -- rightfully, considering the past month or so -- not to take chances.

"I don't know. Tell me why I should."

Kall sighed, shut his book and rested both palms on its leather bound cover. "What would you like to hear? I don't feel the need to sacrifice myself in hopes of alleviating my sins. I don't hear the voices in my head anymore -- at least when I'm awake. I don't know what to tell you. But if I cannot enjoy a moment's solitude without someone hovering over me I shall go mad."

"Hummm, I thought that's why we were hovering to begin with."

Kall cast a baleful stare his way.

"Listen, I have better things to do than waste my time sitting here too. You can not imagine how much better --"

"Then go and do them." Kall snapped in exasperation. "The lot of you are bothering me."

Schneider laughed at the rebuke. He was not usually on the receiving end of Kall-Su's tempers. At the moment he found it amusing. It was heartening to see the flash of temper after too many days of glazed distance from the world.

"Tell you what, I'll go and talk to Arshes and see what she thinks."

"Oh, by all means go and confer about me." Kall waved a hand at him and Schneider tossed him a warning look. One would only tolerate so much imperiousness directed at one's person. Of course it would be nice not to have this draw upon his time. He got up. Sauntered past, not wanting it to seem as if Kall had chased him out.

Down the hall to Arshes' room, thinking seriously about granting Kall's wish for purely selfish reasons. He opened the door without benefit of knocking and Arshes and Gara separated like children caught groping in the chapel. He stared, his hand on the door, the breath he'd drawn to blurt out a question to Arshes caught in his throat. Her eyes were wide, her ears twitching. Gara looked pale, but he straightened his tunic and said in a strained voice.

"Well, good practice this morning --- in the sparring yard."

Schneider's eyes narrowed. Gara moved past him with a mumbled.

"Schneider."

Schneider let him go. Glared once at his back before turning his gaze upon Arshes Nei. "What was that?" He hissed.

"What did it look like?" she hissed back. "What do you want? Don't you ever knock?"

He didn't answer. He was too busy trying to fight down the jealous rage that gathered power like a sieve, wanting very badly to expel it back out in some vastly destructive manner. She must have felt it. Her head came up like she was tasting a scent in the air and her eyes narrowed. She took a step backwards and cried at him.

"What do you want? Should I go and join a convent while you content yourself with her? You've made it painfully clear her wants are more important than anyone else's. Why should I deny myself? What right do you have to ask?"

His fingers dug into the door knob. He kept trying to focus on the promise he had made to Yoko. It was a chore to tame the coiling power. If he stayed there, poised in her doorway he didn't know what he'd do. He turned away from her, said over his shoulder in a low, seething voice.

"Kall wants out from under our watch. Leave him be, if you think it wise."

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath54.htm



	54. Chapter 54

aftermath54

Fifty-four

Gara was leaning against the rough stone balustrade on the outside of the main doors, studying the fine leatherwork of the Murasume's scabbard. There was nothing of tenseness in the way he held his body, or the muscles in his face. Nothing to indicate the unease he had evidenced before he had wisely fled Arshes Nei's room.

Schneider stalked down the steps, fixing Gara with a gaze that would have done a hydra justice. He had known very well the Ninja Master wouldn't run far. Only far enough to take it away from Arshes Nei. Schneider knew the way his sense of honor worked. His own was an uneasy and unpredictable thing.

Gara put the end of the scabbard down in the dirt and rested his hands on the pommel like it was an especially lethal cane.

"So what do we do about this?" He asked, voice neutral.

Schneider circled like a wolf, lashes half-mast, eyes glittering underneath. "I don't know." A sibilant hiss. "I made a promise not to kill you."

Gara nodded at that, face carefully impassive. "You think I'm that easy to kill?"

A laugh that held no trace of humor. He did not bother to justify that question with an answer. Gara took a breath. No fear. He always had been stupid enough to die for a cause. Always had been willing to fight against insurmountable odds in the name of his beliefs. Goddamned stupid, honorable fool who didn't know how close he was to death and probably didn't care.

"I've never fought over a woman." Gara said. "Never cared enough. But it seems stupid to do it over one you don't want to begin with."

"Shut up. It's not yours to say what I want and what I don't."

"Right. You want everything. Spoiled, fucking brat."

Schneider hissed and lashed out with a snaking coil of energy. Gara launched himself into the air, somersaulted and came down behind Schneider. The stone wall where he had stood had a blackened rent some ten feet wide.

"What? Tantrums?" Gara taunted and darted in with more speed than the eye could easily follow and clipped Schneider in the jaw with the hilt of the Murasume. Hard. It hurt. He staggered back a step, tasted blood and was so furious that he didn't even think about healing it. He was fast forgetting he had ever promised Yoko anything.

He was contemplating a nice little Tesla spell. Gara looked as if he were thinking about drawing the Murasume. The package laden figure of Geo Note's little priestly assistant trundled through the courtyard and between them, oblivious to the power that radiated through the air he passed. He smiled hesitantly at Schneider who ignored him in favor of glaring at Gara, commenting as he passed.

"Good morning. Great Priest Geo has found a merchant party to travel south with. Isn't that great news? It will be so nice to have him and lady Yoko home in Meta-Rikan again."

"What?!!"

The little priest was blown backwards off his feet, packages scattering. Schneider pounced on him, grabbing robes in his fists and pulling the man up savagely. "Yoko's not going to Meta-Rikan."

The priest's eyes were saucers staring up at him. The man's mouth worked spasmodically. Schneider shook him in efforts to prompt actual words to spill forth.

"The great priest --- priest had hoped -- they spoke this morning."

Schneider swore. Released his hold and let the priest fall in the mud. Gara was a forgotten presence behind him. "And where is the Great Priest now?" He demanded. The little priest cringed, gesturing weakly out the court yard gates and towards the city. "Helping Father Cittaro in the temple of Eno Marta. I -- I think he took lady Yoko to show her the -- the shrine."

"Oh, did he? Where the hell is this temple?"

The priest looked as if he were about to pass out. Gara supplied from behind him.

"East wall of the city. Under a guard tower."

"How would you know? Since when did you start attending to the gods?" He cast a dark glare over his shoulder. Gara shrugged, not looking particularly put out, or upset, considering what had been interrupted.

"Just like to know my way around is all."

Schneider hissed at him, frustration and anger shifting to make room for just a little bit of apprehension. Yoko wouldn't. He knew she wouldn't agree to such a pilgrimage without telling him. But still, the pull of her father -- of that melting pot of religion and commerce and misplaced honor that was Meta-Rikan -- he knew she mourned the loss of its welcome. Even he remembered things of it that were pleasant and he hated it -- but of course those were more Rushie's recollections than his own.

He cursed and took to the air.

Yoko looked up at the worn wooden statue of the goddess that adorned the small temple's naive. There were chips here and there out of the wood, though it had been lovingly waxed and oiled to keep the wood strong. It was nothing like the idols in the great cities of the south. This little church could barely seat a congregation of fifty souls and from the what father Cittaro said, he received not nearly so many as that on a regular basis. Not surprising considering Kall-Su's views on religion. Views she could understand him holding, but no priest of Eno Marta had ever preached brimstone and fire to keep his flock in line. The goddess was the gentlest of all the gods and the most forgiving. She felt remiss for never thinking to come here herself during all the time she had lived in Sta-Veron. She made a promise to herself to lend the tired seeming old priest her aide from now on. This temple could use a few luxuries and a few helping hands and she was certain she might talk Keitlan and a few of the maids into donating a little time to help a struggling faith.

Geo Note was speaking with the old priest by the open front doors. Yoko wondered about the naive, inspecting the few artifacts that graced the reliquaries lining it.

Father Cittaro made a startled noise from the front. She looked up and saw the last person she would have expected to sit foot in a shoddy little temple to Eno Marta fill the doorway. She opened her mouth in shock a moment before Schneider swept in, grabbed her father by the front of his robes and slammed him into the wall of the atrium.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

She didn't have any trouble hearing what he said, since he was yelling it rather uninhibitidly in Geo Note's shocked face.

"Remove your hands from me." That was father, somewhat lower, evidencing offended indignity.

"How dare you think you can take Yoko back to Meta-Rikan."

So that was it. She could not for the life of her imagine how that bit of conversation had gotten back to him. She made a little frustrated sound in her throat and hurried up the aisle towards them.

"What are you _doing??_" She brushed past the very startled old priest, who was clearly debating whether he ought to attempt to pull the rude assailant off his fellow priest. His lady goddess must have been looking after him to grant him so much hesitation. She had no indecision at all about laying her hands on Rushie's arm. She yanked back with all her strength and he wouldn't budge, too intent on pressing her father into the stone of the wall.

"Stop it!"

He shook her off so hard she staggered a few steps backwards and stabbed an accusing finger at her. "What are_ you_ doing?" He still had an arm across Geo Note's throat, which greatly hindered the great priest from attempting an answer to his first enraged question.

Yoko, who knew exactly what the problem was and could have solved it with a few simple words, got her back up at the accusatory and very proprietary look in his eyes. Irritating, irrational man. If there had been anything readily at hand to throw at him, she would have snatched it up and hurled it. As it was, she threw both hands out in agitation and screamed.

"Who are _you,_ to think I answer to you? I thought we had this conversation?"

"Not this one." He snarled back at her, then thrust Geo Note roughly to the side, his attention focused solely on her. She was never the recipient of his ire -- not real ire, but she found it in his eyes now. And did not particularly like it. She lifted her chin and forced herself to speak in a coolly rational tone of voice.

"If you would ever lower yourself to engage in conversation before you flew off into your asinine rages, maybe people would talk to you. And no, I am not going back to Meta-Rikan with father, even though now that I think about it, it doesn't sound like such a bad notion." She stalked between him and the moon eyed old priest and out onto the lightly traveled street outside. Father called after her, but it wasn't a desperate plea for help, so she figured he wasn't being killed and ignored it.

Rushie didn't try to stop her or attempt to follow her. She almost wished he had. She hated for resentments to simmer. Better to get them out in the open, if it meant harsh words exchanged and anger flared. She ground her teeth and simmered. He was usually quick to take offense, but that reaction had been extreme. Something had set him off this morning.

She slowed her deliberate march somewhat as her anger cooled and veered her course towards market street. The venders were beginning to get a trickle of foreign goods to sell as the weather improved. She browsed through stall after stall of merchandise, trying to divert her stewing indignation. There was a nice display of cutlery on the bench of a metal smith that she was in the mood to inspect. She picked up a stiletto and had dark thoughts about what use such a thing might be put to. She put it down regretfully and drifted to another stall.

There was a figure she recognized standing before a stall boasting used clothing.

"Lily." She said, surprised to find the girl here. Lily looked back, a quick dark of dark eyes behind her hair. A moment's alarm before she recognized Yoko.

"Oh, hello, Lady Yoko. I finished my chores early so mistress Keitlan let me come into town early." She said, as if Yoko would fault her for avoiding her duties.

Yoko smiled brightly, determined to chase away the foul mood and crowded close to see what Lily was looking at. A bright red skirt, voluminous and many layered, like the gypsy wanderers wore when they passed through towns to entertain the landbound folk.

"Oh, that's pretty. Not for working around the castle, I take it?" she grinned as she fingered the material. A blush could almost be seen on Lily's face past the hair.

"No. No. A tavern keep has consented to let me play at night for whatever gratuity his patron's deem fit to grant me with. This --" and she hesitantly touched the plain, brown material of her skirt. "-- did not seem appropriate."

"You're playing at a tavern? How wonderful. I'm so happy for you. Which one? I must come and listen to you."

Lily told her of the lute Gara had gifted her with and her approach of Setha's friend who worked at the tavern last night. She had played a few songs and the late night patrons as well as the tavern keep had been well impressed. Yoko was delighted for her and when the merchant named a price for the skirt that seemed beyond Lily's capacity to pay, offered to help pay for it herself.

"No." Lily said softly. "Thank you, but no. I have been fettered so long, that I long to survive by my own resources and none other. Please understand."

Yoko blinked, quite taken back by the fierce adherence to honor. This girl was only now being allowed to develop her own sense of worth and pride after so long denied it. "I understand. But the skirt would look lovely on you."

Lily sighed and dug in her little purse for another two coins. "I was saving them. But there will be more now that there is no one to take them from me."

"Saving for what?" Yoko asked as they left the vender with Lily's wrapped package.

"Freedom. A means to travel without wondering quite so desperately where my next meal will come from. I know well how it feels to starve and have no wish to experience it again."

"A good minstrel will always find welcome." Yoko encouraged. "Oh, look, pine nut cakes. Have you tasted one? You must." She bought two regardless of Lily's claim to be dependent on no one. They sat down on a low stone wall beyond the market street to consume the cakes. The sticky sweetness clung to fingers making eating the pine nut cakes a messy task. But a thoroughly delightful one. Lily even smiled, which Yoko thought was an amazing thing. The girl had to push her hair back to eat the cake to keep honey from lodging in it. Her features were delicate, almost exotic in the cast of her eyes and the tone of her olive skin.

"Why do you hide your face all the time? What are you afraid of?" Yoko voiced the question as soon as it surfaced in her mind. Lily blinked at her and reflexively looked down, but the hair tucked behind her ears would not fall to cover her face.

"See? You're trying to do it now."

Lily sighed, seeming uneasy with Yoko's bluntness. "It is easier to hide, I suppose. It always has been. If they don't notice you, then they tend to leave you alone."

"Oh. That's terrible. What a terrible way to live." Yoko finished off her cake and licked her fingers one by one. "But you don't have to anymore. You're not a slave. And by the way you have to tell me all about _that._ I've only heard the barest rumors."

"I don't see how." Lily grumbled. "I can hardly get away from the gossip."

Yoko lifted both brows, chuckling. "Well, I've been --- preoccupied -- the last few days and haven't had the time to catch up on all the rampart calumny. But I can well imagine how surprised the staff was. I mean such a thing is soooo out of character for him. I mean unless you use threats and force and all sorts of other dire things as impetus Kall-Su just never gets involved in the workings of the common world. He's like the master of distancing himself from everything that doesn't directly interest him. You must have really made an impression for him to make such a gesture."

"I didn't." Lily said softly, clearly uncomfortable with the topic. "I offered support and he was merely repaying the debt."

"If you say so."

Lily drew her brows and cast a hesitant look at Yoko. "I do --- but why else would Lord Kall-Su have done such a thing?"

"I haven't the foggiest. But, he's been -- off a little bit since he came back. I think the shell he always uses to protect himself is cracked and he can't figure out how to put it back together."

"You know him well?"

"Pretty well. He sort of got forced to accept me because of Rushie -- otherwise, he'd barely know I was alive. But that's how most powerful sorcerers are, to be honest. Most of them are so wrapped up in wizardly stuff, that they don't have time for the world."

"It scares me, the casual talk of great magics."

"Well, you are definitely in the wrong place then, 'cause we've got the best collection of magic in the world right here in Sta-Veron. I'm not bad at it myself, you know?"

"You?"

"Well, it's mostly holy magic that father taught me. I was going to be a Holy Sword once upon a time before the world went insane. I've got a good sense for people and you know, you've got an awful bright aura for a just a normal girl. Are you sure you don't have a touch of magic yourself?"

"No." Lily said sharply. "And I wouldn't want it if I did."

"Well, it's not too bad. It sort of comes in handy sometimes. And sorcerers aren't all that scary -- as long as they're not cranky -- if you keep them on a leash and don't let them think they can walk all over you."

Lily did not look quite convinced about that. A shadow fell over them and both girls looked up. Yoko scowled.

"You're blocking my sunlight, Rushie."

He crossed his arms and scowled back at her. People veered to walk around him on the cobbled side walk.

"I would like to talk with you."

"Can't you see I'm busy." She said airily.

He glanced briefly at Lily, then sniffed and said. "I will not apologize in the midst of market."

Yoko's brows shot up at that stiff declaration. He was going to apologize? Amazing. Such a thing was not to postponed or missed. Such a thing was to be savored to the fullest extent possible. She kept the self-satisfied smile from her face and leaned in to Lily to promise. "I will come and listen to you play tonight and applaud outrageously so that the tavern keep knows how valuable an asset you are."

Then she slipped off the wall and strolled down the street with the sure assumption that if he had convinced himself he had done her an injustice, he would surely follow. He did.

Kall-Su woke up with the most dreadful traces of nightmare lingering in his head. The pounding of his heart was liken to deafen him. He could not recall what he had dreamed. He was not certain he wished to. There was wetness on his cheek, though to attest to the disagreeable nature of the nightscare. He hissed in disgust over his own weakness and threw the bedsheet back in a fit of violence. He summoned a cold, blue witchlight and stood, listening to the vast emptiness of the sleeping castle. He went to the window and thrust the shutters open and the glass window panels, needing to see the sky, even if it was night black and all but covered with clouds.

The brisk, chill breeze brought with it the faint smell of wood smoke from the city beyond, the more elusive smell of rain that had recently come to wash away even more of the snow that clung stubbornly to the land. Mostly, though, it brought a sense of freedom that he didn't think he could ever get enough of. Even the concern of his friends had been a yoke that weighed upon him, stifling and so clinging that he had been on the verge of fleeing this place that he loved to seek solace from it. But they had not come all of today, after Schneider had left him. And other than Keitlan with his meals, no one had intruded upon him.

So Schneider trusted in his assurances of sanity, even if he felt far from such a state now, with the oblique remnants of nightmare still fresh in his mind. Schneider continually surprised him, going from stubborn single mindedness to complete preoccupation with something that drew his attention more strenuously than thoughts of Kall-Su's impending suicide. Stupid, stupid thing to let himself be driven to. The thought of his own gullibility, his own weakness, made him sick. And angry. And worst of all, he could not quite manage to shed the images and the words, no matter whether they were real or planted by Angelo, from the recesses of his mind. He pushed them away, but they always lurked about, waiting for an unguarded moment to sneak up on him. Perhaps they came out more fiercely in his dreams and drifted away tauntingly when he woke prematurely from the nightmares.

They fluttered about in the shadows now, waiting for him to return to bed before they might pounce again. He had been getting little in the way of restful sleep lately, a few hours a night at most. He had no desire to retreat back to slumber now. He put on the robe lying across the foot of the bed. It was a fine, elegantly embroidered affair that had been added to his wardrobe without him even knowing it. A good many things had cropped up without Kall-Su noticing at all. Someone at least had a care for his state of dress.

He tread softly down the hall, hesitated at the door to his study, but the pull of the books was not strong, so he passed it by in favor of padding down the steps towards the great hall, which would be blessedly empty at this late hour. As would be the kitchen which guarded the door to the wine cellar, which he had, now that he thought about it, only entered once and that long ago when he'd first taken this city and made this castle his own. He had only ever entered the kitchens a few times more than that. Servants had always fallen over themselves to attend him and he had always taken full and rightful advantage of their vassalage. It never occurred to him to act otherwise, until even the thought of a lowly servant intruding upon his solitude made him uneasy. And he dearly wanted a bottle of the very fine wine he kept in the cellars below the kitchen. Enough of the wine could chase even the nightmares away.

He stopped with his foot on the bottom step at the sound of laughter from the hall. He drew his brows, irrationally angry that someone should dare to occupy it when he wanted to traverse it in privacy. Then a burst of giggles again and he thought he recognized Yoko's voice.

"Oh, Setha, you were so baaadd."

"Oh, the lads, they love it, Lady." Another voice he did not recognize. "Play the one about the lovelorn knight and his lady married to another, please. I want to hear it again, before I find me pillow."

"Oh, yes, that one's so tragic. It was the best you did." Yoko sounded drunk. The other girl did. There was a quiet, murmured ascent by someone else that he couldn't quite hear, then a lilting procession of music accompanied by a hauntingly beautiful voice. He didn't need to see the other girl to know who it was. The voice triggered a flood of memories. In the midst of nightmare -- or had it been reality -- that lilting voice had been a break in the darkness that threatened to consume him whole. For no reason he could think of she had offered a lifeline -- it just hadn't been enough.

He slid down the wall and sat on the next to bottom step, trapped by the song. By the familiar nuances of a voice.

_Who are you?_

_No one._

Her name was Lily. She had refused to tell him, ashamed of her slavery. He recalled her hiding her marked hand. He could see the gesture over and over in his mind. So very antithetical to the bravery she had shown in daring to enter his cell. It was why he had sought her out, because of the gesture. Because he could not get out of his head that that mark made her think she was worthless and yet she had been his only bit of salvation in that dank, windowless hell of the Prophet's making. Her worth therefore was immeasurable, even if his own had plummeted.

The song was over and he had drifted through it, hearing the voice but not the words. The girls were talking about finding their respective beds. Their footsteps pattered on the floor approaching the steps. He had of a sudden a great desire to be elsewhere, a total wish for anonymity. He made a gesture and gravity lost its hold on him. Floated upwards to reside in the deepest shadows of the alcove over the stairs. They danced up the stairs below, Yoko practically skipping, humming to herself, the other girl, one of the servants, swaying in her path, hardly able to hold her balance. And the third girl, who held an instrument lovingly against her breast and climbed more sedately than the other two, head down and hair falling over her face as it always seemed to do.

Then they passed and the silence crept back. But the solitude wouldn't come with it, because the siren song wouldn't leave his head.

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   [1]: aftermath55.htm



	55. Chapter 55

aftermath55

Fifty-five

The stablemaster trailed nervously behind Kall-Su as he drifted from stall to stall, touching a velvety nose here, scratching under a forelock there as the bolder stable denizens thrust their heads over stall doors to get a bit of attention.

"The mare you brought from Thaldiea gave foal three weeks ago." The stablemaster said and Kall wondered down the row to see the mother and foal. Chestnut mare. White foal. The sire had been his favorite. The one killed by Angelo at the western mountains. Killed because he had been too distracted by mundane battle to pay attention to what was happening on the arcane level. If he'd been paying attention, he might have erected a better shield.

He pushed away from the stall and curtly told the stablemaster to saddle a mount. He wanted out from behind the walls of castle and city. He was tired of the stares. The concern or the fear or the speculation in people's eyes when they looked at him. Like they expected him to fly into a rage, or perform some unpredictable act or --- shatter.

A stableboy led the horse out for him. He scratched a ticking muscle in a thick furred shoulder. With spring coming on, that coat would turn glossy and thin. There was shedding now, hair coming loose at his touch, coating his glove. He brushed it off on his thigh and pulled himself up into the saddle. He was at the castle gate, the gate guard throwing him strident salutes when Kiro came pelting up on foot behind him, calling for him to wait. Impatient and knowing full well what was on his captain of the guard's mind, he turned and stared blackly over his shoulder.

"My lord, let me arrange escort." Kiro was out of breath and red faced.

"No." Kall-Su said simply.

"But, my lord --you're not even armed." Plaintive, highly displeased tone in his captain's voice. As if a sword would make a difference against an enemy unimpressed by magic.

"No." He did not wait for further argument, but urged his mount forward, kicked it into a canter that distanced him from gate and guard captain in short order. Out into the city, which was bustling with people on such a bright day. The ironshod hooves of his horse created a cadence upon the cobblestone streets. No one accosted him, or stared and pointed out that their lord passed through them. He went hardly noticed at all, save for those who had to shift out of the path of his mount. He was not dressed today to impress, but rather to blend. Simple brown and tan, like any soldier or woodsman might wear. Even the guards at the outer gate did not give him much heed. No more than they would anyone riding out past their watch. They would give more scrutiny on the way back in.

The ground was muddy and slush covered. Tough, yellowed grasses starting to stretch their heads towards the sun. The rain last night had melted a good deal of the remaining snow. It clung in stubborn patches here and there, holding out more firmly against the distant horizon where the northern mountains loomed. He rode that way, veering off of the very muddy track used by wagons and sleds that led to the northern forest. He had no wish to be mud spattered from the knees down and trusted the soggy, grass more than the water filled pot holes of the road. There were sheep and the shaggy cattle that thrived in the north dotting the plain to the west. The herders were quick to take advantage of snow free grazing land to fatten up animals kept in runs during the harshest part of the winter. There were boys out there keeping watch, for no self respecting herder would trust his herd to safety when then passes to the north opened and the nomads from across the mountains drifted down into more civilized lands to see what fruit was ripe for the taking. The stablemaster would put the horses out to pasture soon enough as well. The stables had been full of agitated snorts and shifting, nervous bodies. They could smell spring in the air and wanted out. The horse under him was practically bouncing with its desire to stretch its legs. He gave it its head and the walls of the city shrank behind him.

The forest line grew. As did a cluster of moving darkness on the trail. A large party traveling towards the city. Traders down from the mountains with furs, mined treasures, hard to come by winter roots and delicate spring shoots only available in certain places in the high ranges. He thought to avoid them, to ride by off the side of the road and just let them pass, for had the whole purpose of this foray been to escape from all things human? But the practical part of his mind wondered if the northern passes were open and had these merchants seen signs of bandits or nomads from the Tundra. All things he should have been vastly interested in during the active time of spring thaw. He had to force himself to find an interest in them now. Had to force himself to guide his horse closer to the track as the distance separating him from them closed.

His eye reflexively counted twenty riders. No wagons or sleds, but their tough, small mountain ponies laden with bundles of furs and skins. They were armed. He saw that when they were within a few hundred yards. Knives and swords and the occasional ax. Trappers were a surly lot, and dangerous, but did not usually travel in packs, nor so heavily armed.

One of them hailed him. He did not lift a hand in return, merely reined in his horse off the track and let them approach. Two riders split from the group and met him. The others mulled in the road, all dark eyed and irascible.

"Are the gates to the city open for trade?" One of the men asked. Scarred badly on the right side of his face, dark skinned, a fallacious smile twisting his lips. The smell was putrid. The other one circled Kall's horse like a wolf sizing up prey. That one he ignored.

"It is." He said. The gate guard would not let them pass with such an assortment of cutlery. The gate guard might be wise not to let them pass at all. Not trappers at all, he thought. More like predators down from the heights.

"What passes are open?" he asked.

The two exchanged dark looks. "The lower Aldritch. The upper is still snowbound. The Creniin is passable for a brave man. Another few weeks and most will be open. Now answer me a question, boy. Are the rumors true?"

Kall lifted a brow. "Which?"

"That Sta-Veron lost its lord?"

"No."

"That's good, then." The scarred man laughed. His stench was beginning to become intolerable. "We've business to discuss."

Kall did not care at the moment to know what sort of business. Bandits. He was quite certain of it. And bandit politics at this time held no interest for him. He waved a hand towards the city, started to rein away. "Fine. Then you wish to be about it, then."

The one that had been circling him moved his horse into Kall's path. "He has an attitude, Dreze. And him not even armed."

Kall met that one's eyes. Dark, animal eyes filled with the purely human need to feel powerful over others. This was man who killed not for gain, but to see the brief moment of utter fear on the faces of his victims. And all he saw in Kall was the facade of youth, the lack of proper defense, an obvious distaste for him and his. Kall perceived it in a glance and held back the desire to kill the man on the spot.

"Thuron." The other, Dreze, said. "Not now."

Thuron smiled at him, revealing rotting, chipped teeth. Aside from killing him outright, Kall-Su did the thing that would most wound him. He ignored his presence entirely and rode around him, not even looking back. A few low murmurs behind him. The rattle of tack as the party gathered itself and continued on down the muddy track.

Bandits who wanted to parlay. They always wanted one thing or another. Some concession here or there that they never learned he would not give. Let Kiro deal with it. And rumors sped faster than horses if the one about his capture had managed to reach the ears of bandits hidden in the northern heights in so short a while. It was a wonder they hadn't been razing the villages in the north mountains if they thought he was gone.

He kept towards the forest at a leisurely cantor, entered the shadow and shade of age old pine and evergreen where sound was muffled and the world was less harsh than it had been on the featureless plain. There was still a good amount of snow on the ground under the cover of evergreen canopy. Birdsong trilled here and there. The winter birds sparring for territory with the first of the migrating vagrants that flew up from lands unknown to summer here. It was peaceful here. He pushed thoughts of the bandits in the thin guise of trappers out of his mind. The cloying unease of the last several days begin to fade. Don't think of anything but the motion of the horse and the smells of a forest awakening to spring and the sounds of unobtrusive nature.

There was a spring through the forest, an hour's ride into the trees that he thought to make his goal. It had flat rocks surrounding it and water that tasted so pure that folk carted barrels of it back to Sta-Veron. He dismounted when he reached the little glade and let the reins fall. The horse wondered over to the spring and stuck its nose in to nosily slurp cold water. Kall stepped onto the rocks. Found a perch near the edge and settled down. The spring was fed from water trickling down the rocks from a mountainous source to the north. It was shallow and clear, its bottom lined with small, polished rocks. He pulled one knee up and rested his chin upon it. No pressure. No disgrace existed here. No expectations to live up to, when he just couldn't anymore. That was the worst part. The fact that all of them, from the lowliest guardsman to Schneider looked at him and expected something of him. Different things, granted, but they all wanted to see something that told them he was all right. The same. And he didn't think he was and didn't know whether he ever could be. It wasn't that he believed all the things that Angelo had slipped into his mind, it wasn't that he agreed with them in the light of sanity and reason. It was that he had allowed himself to accept them at all. That he had let it all overwhelm him in the first place. Schneider wouldn't have. Schneider would have laughed in Angelo's face, regardless of the pain and the humiliation. Gara probably would have done the same. But, he, who had spent so much time working to expand his magic, to learn the secrets of the arcane, found that without it as a crutch, he crumbled. How had Schneider managed without it all the time he'd had Angelo's wards on his wrists?

He pulled the other knee up, miserable now that his thoughts had betrayed the peace of this place. He had failed so badly to live up to his own expectations -- his own standards that he held for himself -- it just didn't seem worth it to try and rebuild the impervious, imperious face he had always worn. The one reflected in the spring just looked haunted and vulnerable. He looked away from it. Another reason to hate himself.

The shadows began to shift. The afternoon slipped into evening. The light was fading and it would be full dark before he got back to Sta-Veron. Kiro would be frantic. He rode back, in no particular haste to return. The gates were closed for the night, and torches flared along the walls.

"Lord Kall-Su?" A voice called down and Kall figured that Kiro had appraised the gate guard to be on the anticipate his return. He looked up so they could see him, and heard them scrambling to open the gates. He rode past with all of their eyes on his back and through the city proper until he had to go through the same thing at the inner gates of the castle.

The stablemaster came out himself to take the horse, inspecting the muddy legs as soon as Kall had dismounted as if he had ridden it hard over treacherous ground instead of merely through mud and muck. He was spattered with it himself. He had barely started towards the castle when Kiro came pelting out, the vast look of relief on his face quickly replaced by one of discontent. Kall most strenuously did not wish to be lectured like a tardy child and was about to say as much when his captain said.

"We've bandits in the city, my lord. Emissary's of Velo Hran himself."

Kall lifted a brow, pulling off his gloves as he walked, Kiro fast at his side. "I thought he was killed two winters ago."

"As did I. But it appears he was in the Tundra playing diplomat with the nomads."

"Diplomat? That's a far stretch. What does he want?"

"He sent one of his brothers. He wouldn't say exactly, claims he will only parlay with you, but I've the impression Velo Hran has formed an alliance with some of the nomads and has set his sites on expanding his territory. There was also some reference to another of his brothers being murdered last winter by a wizard in your employ, while he was _peacefully hunting._" Kiro sounded rightfully scornful.

A wizard in his employ? The incident at the lake where Schneider had decided to get creative. Wonderful. His head was beginning to pound. He waved a hand negligently at Kiro and told him to arrange it, then climbed up the main steps as the captain hurried away. He pulled the door open with one hand and rubbed the bridge of his nose with the other, thinking this was a headache magic would not wish away. He was a step into the door when he looked up and found the girl hesitating before him, so close he could smell the fragrance of whatever scent she had used to wash her hair. Lavender, he thought. She was clutching a lute to her chest, very obviously on her way out the doors he had stepped in from. He was very obviously blocking her path to the outside. For a brief moment she stared up at him, sliver of face between the straight hair, all dark eyes and slightly parted lips. Then she looked down, and the hair fell to hide her features. She made a quick little curtsy, proper deference, and tried to scoot around him and escape outside. As if she were afraid of him.

He forced himself to take a step and then another because he did not know how to deal with the catch in his throat and the erratic beating of his heart. It was easier to just walk away. The door shut behind him.

The talk spread through the castle, from garrison to kitchen. The bandit Velo Hran was alive, and everyone had thought him dead two winter's past, shot through the heart by Sta-Veron soldiers. Apparently not. Apparently he'd been stirring trouble to the north and now came to Sta-Veron's doorstep demanding favors. Bandit's were an uppity lot. If they weren't trying to slit your throat in the night, they were trying to rob you under your nose while convincing you it was their god given right.

That was the talk among the servants at any rate. The talk in the garrison was considerably darker, as men contemplated a spring flood of raids among the villages and outposts to the north. Bandits weren't half as bad as nomads, who hadn't a shred of human decency among the lot of them and the thoughts of the two banding together had many a brave man shaking his head in consternation over what the future might hold.

Keitlan knew all the details -- at least the details of the gossip and she was not hesitant to share them to any willing to listen. She burst into Yoko's room with an armful of linen and a hefty burden of speculation to share and found the girl only half dressed and it being the middle of the day. Then she discovered that Yoko was not alone. That Wizard was reclining upon her bed and he wasn't dressed at all. Even a honest woman couldn't help but stare. Yoko let out a little sound and snatched a sheet across his hips, since he seemed disinclined to bother. He smiled lazily at Keitlan. Keitlan blushed. Yoko did.

"Good morning, Keitlan." Yoko finished lacing her tunic and held out her arms for the linens.

"Afternoon is more like it." Keitlan refused to be intimidated by that silver haired seducer of young woman -- and middle aged -- and old if you counted Cook's infatuation, and went to put the linens away herself.

"Oh, it's early yet. Perhaps we should stay in." He purred to Yoko, who cast him an irritated glare and motioned him to be quiet.

"The castle's bursting with speculation over the bandits come to see his lordship." One had to get a little of the gossip out, even if the wizard was making her fidgety.

"What bandits?" Yoko asked innocently.

Keitlan frowned. "Goodness gracious girl, if you left your room more often you'd hear what's going on. Does your father know what you're about with this --- debaucher?"

Yoko opened her mouth.

The Wizard cut her off. "If he doesn't and there is a god, then please let me be the one to tell him. In detail."

Yoko glared again.

"What bandits, Keitlan?"

"Oh, from Velo Hran, who was supposed to be dead, with a treaty or somesuch nonsense for lord Kall-Su. The bandits have made some sort of compact with the nomads, which is no good news, let me tell you, and they're here to demand gods know what. And supposedly they're asking for retribution for Velo Hran's brother which that one --" and she pointed a finger towards the wizard. " --- killed last winter after the bandits left the bag of heads on our doorstep."

"Well, that certainly sounds entertaining." The wizard remarked, shifting on the bed in preparation of getting up. "When is all this bargaining and retribution supposed to take place?"

"This evening." Keitlan averted her eyes when he slipped off the bed and began looking for scattered clothes. Yoko smiled at her painfully as she ushered her towards the door.

"Modesty's not his best trait." She whispered just before she shut the door in Keitlan's face. The housemistress sniffed, thinking that it wasn't a trait he possessed at all. But one had to admit -- if ever a man didn't need it . . . .

Schneider sauntered into the great hall. There were more men at arms than usually occupied it mulling about. The tables had been pulled against the walls to open a space before the lord's table with had been moved to sit parallel before the great hearth. Kall-Su was no where to be seen. Captain Kiro was in evidence, though, giving orders to a group of his men by the door. Gara was also loitering by the fire, a cup of something in his hand. They met eyes briefly, before Schneider lifted one brow and decided to ignore him.

Every one seemed on edge and merely because a overzealous bandit lord got the bright idea to unite factions. Waste of time. Bandits and nomads, by nature did not work well as a concerted force. It wouldn't last. The only reason he bothered to come down at all, was because he was curious to see how Kall would deal with it. Curious to see whether he had his poise back. And of course to see just what retribution was expected of him for the supposed death of this bandit leader's brother. He assumed it had been one of the men in the cave that had been unfortunate enough to attack him instead of cowering in supplication like rational beings.

A guard burst through the doors and spoke to Kiro, who waved his men into positions against the wall. Maybe twenty guards at attention. Schneider leaned against the wall to watch. The doors opened and another few guards escorted six rough, fur and leather clad men into the hall. The reek of them immediately drifted through the air, as if the leathers they wore had been freshly killed and improperly cleaned, or more likely, they hadn't seen fit to wash their flesh since fighting free of their mother's womb. They were unarmed, aside from the offensiveness of the odor and belligerently fearless despite that. They stood in the center of the hall and one of them loudly demanded to know where Kall-Su was. Kiro looked like he wanted to just slice them down on the spot and said between gritted teeth that _Lord_ Kall-Su would meet them at his convenience. To which the spokesman bandit replied that they had better things to do than waste their time in this hall. There was very likely to be violence before Kall ever decided to show up.

Then he did. Came down the stairs very austerely made up. Very business like high necked black tunic, very shiny black boots, the only ornamentation the gold clasp of his cloak. You'd never know to look at him that he hadn't been born of the bluest blood on the continent. He strode past Schneider, with just a flicker of his eyes that held a warning not to interfere. Schneider shrugged and stayed where he was. Kall-Su walked around the table, the center of everyone's attention and sat down in the central, high backed chair.

The bandits were gaping at him, one of them even going so far as to take a step forward and point an accusing finger.

"You!" the loud one said.

Kall fixed him with that icy glare that came so naturally and waited for the bandit to say something more informative. The bandits collected themselves, and the spokesman straightened his shoulders and declared.

"I am Thuron Hran, brother of the great Velo Hran and I come bearing his tidings."

The bandit, Thuron Hran paused, as if waiting to see if Kall-Su would respond. He didn't. Just sat there and stared unwaveringly at the man. Silence tended to unnerve an adversary and Kall had always been so much damned better at maintaining it than Schneider ever had. This bandit was full of himself and his self importance though and refused to be intimidated.

"What? No warm welcome for your friends to the north?"

A moment more of silence, then Kall-Su said softly. "You came to me. State your business."

The bandit sneered. The men behind him shifted. Kiro did. Schneider thought Kall-Su had seen more diplomatic days.

"You thought you had killed him, but Velo Hran is blessed by the deus of the cold north. He has forged a union between the tribes of nomads that wonder the endless Tundra and the bandit clans of the north. He has become supreme chieftain among the nomads and the clans."

"I have no interest in the Tundra." Kall said. "Why gift me with this news? Does he wish to boast his accomplishments?"

"No." Thuron hissed. "He wishes to reestablish borders. The northern mountains and all within them shall be our lands."

Kiro made a little choking sound of fury. Kall didn't say anything.

"You will recognize him as lord of those lands and there shall be compensation for crimes done against us. For the murder of our beloved brother."

Thuron conveniently forgot to mention the sack of heads. Schneider began to quietly walk along the wall towards the table.

"The execution of bandits is not a crime." Kall said softly.

"He and his men were peacefully hunting when your evil sorcerer attacked and killed all but one of his party."

Kall glanced aside as Schneider casually slipped around the table and draped himself over a chair, one leg swinging idly across the chair arm.

"Would you like his head?" he inquired and motioned towards Schneider. "Feel free to try and take it."

Schneider smiled at them all. One of the bandits stumbled backwards, eyes glued to him, whispering harshly. "That's him. That's him that did it."

Schneider did not recall the face, but the fellow was missing a hand and one could assume from the expression and the tone that it was the man he had let live to take warnings back to his fellows. Thuron Hran lifted a hand and the man shut up.

"My brother is a reasonable man. He offers you this chance for peace. The northern mountains will be ours one way or the other. And who would be so fool hardy as to try and take a wizard's head? Twenty horses and a thousand pieces of gold will be due recompense."

Schneider laughed. He couldn't help it, it was so ridiculous a demand. Kall didn't blink. "It seems," he finally said. "That you've wasted your time. You may take my refusal back to Velo Hran."

Thuron's face twisted in anger. He stalked to the table and slammed his palms down. "There are villages in those mountains that will pay for your stubborn greed. They would willingly pledge to Velo given the chance. You've lost face, Ice Lord. The rumors spread even to the high north of your weakness. You were taken by an enemy and have lost honor - - "

He got that last word out on a choked breath. The ice started at his fingers and spread up his body like a quicksilver infection. Within one breath and the next a warm, breathing man had turned into an icy corpse. Kall pushed his chair back from the table with a violence. The movement caused the frozen Thuron Hran to topple backwards. He shattered on the floor. Every weapon in the room came up. The bandits were crying out in rage and fear, even as guards descended upon them to keep them in one controllable knot.

Kall-Su stabbed a finger at them, all composure fled, his eyes flashing with rage and Schneider thought, some small bit of consternation. "If one of my villages is attacked, I will personally send every bandit in those mountains to hell. You may take that back to Velo Hran."

He whirled on Kiro and ordered. "Get them out of my city. Now. Take what precautions you deem necessary."

"Well," Gara came up between Kall-Su and Schneider. "This should make for an interesting summer."

Kall glared at him, then stalked off. Schneider glanced up at him lazily. "Are you planing on staying?"

"I don't know what I'm planning. Does it matter to you?"

"Only as far as Arshes is concerned."

"I don't make her plans for her."

"Hummm." He swung his leg off the chair arm and rose. Gara stepped back a step warily, which was somewhat satisfying, but not nearly as much as finishing the fight they'd begun a few days past would have been. But of course Yoko would have fits and Arshes probably would and today he just didn't feel the need to kill Gara as badly as he had then. Bruise him a little maybe, but not see him dead. For the time being he preferred finding and cornering Kall to sparring with Gara, so he abandoned the Ninja Master to the room full of edgy guards and followed Kall-Su upstairs.

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   [1]: aftermath56.htm



	56. chapter 56

aftermath56

Fifty-six 

Kall, predictably enough, was pacing in his study. Looking spooked and angry and miserable all at the same time. He glared when Schneider strolled in and spat.

"I don't want to hear it."

"Hear what, prey tell?" Schneider asked innocently. "That I think their offer of twenty horses and a thousand pieces of gold was getting off cheap compared to my head. I'm worth so much more than that."

Kall stared, then hissed through his teeth and went to stand at the side of the window, pressing his forehead against the stone frame. "I handled that badly."

"Nonsense. You did fine. I was highly entertained."

"I didn't do it to entertain you." Kall snapped, then took a breath to get his emotions under control and added in a calmer voice. "He took me off guard."

"I know. Its okay. What're a few bandits on the warpath?"

"Sneaky and infiltrative and a damned nuisance. And I don't want to deal with it. I can not deal with it now."

That last was plaintive and desperate enough to make Schneider wary. He moved over to lean against the window sill, where he could see Kall's face.

"All right." He said carefully. "Then don't. Take off and let Kiro deal with them. He's competent enough. Nobody says you have to be tied down here forever. Forever is too long. Go somewhere and get your head straight. You're due."

"I can't."

"You can do whatever you want. You're the second best sorcerer in the world." He meant it to be amusing. Kall turned his cheek to the wall and stared at him mournfully.

"Am I?"

Schneider frowned. He had not thought of Angelo in a while. Did not want to think of him now, because the last week had been blissfully happy, aside from a few minor incursions. Kall still thought about him though, that was painfully clear. Maybe bandits from the north threatening Sta-Veron territories were not a bad thing. Maybe such an infraction would distract from darker, more painful things. And bandit chasing in the spring and summer had to be preferable to doing it in the dead of winter. It might even be amusing. He didn't say such a thing though. There were certain things he had the restraint to be tactful with. Outright manipulation when Kall was not at his best was one of them. Suggesting that the brutal attack of bandits and nomads might be an amusing diversion from other problems was another. Kall had too much of a sense of responsibility for Sta-Veron to take that nicely.

"It doesn't count if all your power's stolen. And even then --- I don't know."

Kall-Su shook his head, wanting away from the subject. "I passed them on the road yesterday and knew they were bad omens to something and just didn't care. I should have killed them all."

"Probably." Schneider agreed. "I would have. It would have done wonders to shore up your reputation."

"Which is badly in need of repair." Kall agreed morosely, then pushed off from the wall and took a few frustrated steps into the room. "That they would dare to come to me and make such demands! Did they think I would just docile allow it?"

"Probably not. But it was gutsy. A very obvious show of antagonism, that this Velo Hran had the balls to approach you with such an outrageous list of demands. You make a move like that to bolster the spirit of your army -- even if it's an army of bandits and nomads."

Every maid that could squeeze into the space around the kitchen door to see through the crack they dared open it, or at the very least hear what was being said, did so. The lot of them pressed up against each other in their eagerness to observe dread goings on. It was a great excitement -- bandits bringing demands to Sta-Veron. Everyone knew of course, that no demand from a conniving bandit would be agreed to, and everyone wanted to see the rebuttal. So the serving girls gathered in the kitchen and jostled for position, changing places every once and a while so they all could see what faces the bandits that dared this castle and the ire of their lord looked like.

Lily found herself caught in amidst the furor. She had to admit to a certain curiosity, though it sprang more from the desire to see the lord of Sta-Veron than the bandits that braved it. She was one of the last to press her eye against the cracked door. She saw the backs of guards, the gathered assembly of rough looking men that stood in the floor before the long table. The high backs of chairs that hid their occupants from the view of the kitchen, until one of the bandits stalked forward and slammed his palms down onto the table top, dreadful words spewing from his lips. Then he hesitated, gasped with wide eyes and in no longer than it took for him to do that he was a frozen thing poised at the edge of the table.

She wanted to see no more. She wanted away from the door, but the press of girls behind her kept her there long enough to see Kall-Su jump up, his chair pushed backwards, and make a dire promise to the remaining bandits. She twisted and turned then, pushing through complaining maids to get away from the door and the terrible thing she had witnessed. A casual killing. Like something the Master might do. Too many times had she seen someone innocently offend him and him kill them on the spot. No thought. No remorse. She ran from the heat of the kitchen cookfires. Out into the yard where the wind blew laundry on the lines. No. She could not in all honesty equate him with the Master. He would not kill in cruelty. He would not take sadistic pleasure in the act. But he would kill. And he did it in a way that mortal, mundane men could not fathom or defend against.

It was a dangerous, deadly creature that filled her dreams. She was oh so certain of that now and wanted flight badly. Wanted an escape from this place where she found herself caged with him. A cage with an open door that she could step out of at any time, but not without braving the world outside unprepared. That scared her even more. Being a free woman and failing in the simple act of supporting and protecting herself.

She walked around the side of the castle, along the garrison wall and saw the guards bustling the surviving bandit's out of the courtyard. The garrison captain was barking orders and men were scattering at his commands, a great many of them following the group that had charge of the bandits.

She wrapped her arms about herself as men hurried this way and that, weapons clanking. She remembered his eyes last night, startled out of preoccupation, wide with honest surprise as he was confronted with her unexpected presence. Ah, God, he had the most bewitching eyes, snaring a body without him even meaning to do it. But she was good at distancing herself and had slipped free with a curtsy and a headlong rush out the door. But she couldn't escape the memory of it. And she wanted to, because she was afraid.

She could not stand to stay in the castle a moment longer this afternoon. She avoided Keitlan and further chores and slipped out the gates past the watchful, wary eye of the castle guard. Into the city and past the close by tavern she had been playing at. Further into the depths of Sta-Veron to prowl the other taverns looking for sign of other minstrels. Other travelers who were free to leave when they chose. She found them finally, drinking among themselves, not yet playing for the evening crowd that had yet to begin to fill the tavern. It was still early and they did nothing more than talk among themselves and casually tune instruments. Four young men. A lutest, a flute player, one with a small harp, the other who had a collection of wooden chimes and bells arranged before him. She recalled the sweetness of the music they made. Had listened one night, before she had gotten her own lute, for the entire time they'd played. Wistful and a little jealous that they had seen so many places. They told tales of the exotic courts they had visited. They spun litanies about great events witnessed or passed from harper to harper. It was their way to carry from city to city and town to town words of all the things men might wish to remember. Recollection fell to the harper since few men bothered to record history any more.

She wanted so badly to talk with them. To ask them a thousand things. To throw herself on their mercy and beg that when they left Sta-Veron they let her come with them. But all she could do was stand against the wall and rehearse all her desperate wants in her head, because to voice them might mean they would miraculously agree and as badly as she wanted to leave the pull to stay was as strong. But crueler by far.

"Well hello?"

She blinked and found one of the harpers looking up at her. A tall, lanky redhead whose attention drew the other's eyes towards her.

"Have we another of Allun's admirers here?" A shorter, tow headed one asked with a mischievous glint in his eyes. A handsome blonde who had been tuning a lute on his lap cast a perturbed glance at the other, then looked back to her and tilted his head.

"No, I think not. She's the girl who sings at the White Hare Tavern."

"So she is." The red head agreed and repeated his original greeting. "Hello there, pretty lady with the sweet voice. Is this a professional call?"

"I --- I came to see you play." She stammered.

"It's a bit early yet." The blonde called Allun said. "Sit down in the meanwhile."

She slipped forward, took a seat on the bench beside the redhead who grinned down at her. "Sta-Veron is sorely bereft of talented players. But one can hardly be surprised, as far from the beaten track as it is."

"But the money is good." The tow head said cheerfully. "And its not so bad in the spring."

"My name is Dell." The red head said. "This abrasive one is Thizura, the quiet one is Crayl and the pretty one is Allun."

The descriptions were apt enough to have the other three looking at Dell with unappreciative, wry stares. Lily blushed, uncomfortable among the easy familiarity.

"My name is Lily."

"Ah, appropriate." Dell said. "But a night variety I think. One whose petals only open with the kiss of moonlight."

He was a poet as well as a musician. The others rolled their eyes. Lily almost did.

"So, you travel with no company, Lily?" Dell asked.

"Did you see one with her when she sang?" Thizura asked archly.

"I asked her, not you."

"No." Lily said quietly to cut off the bickering. She did not know whether to be amused or aghast. "I -- am alone. I have not traveled with a company in a very long time."

"A woman by herself on the road ---" Allun shook his head warily. "Not a safe thing in any land."

She did not comment. Not willing to come out and beg for something she was not certain she could accept even if offered. They accepted her easily into their conversation, birds of feather. And she thought she might enjoy traveling among them. They were witty and open, talented and as most good minstrels were, conceited of their skills. She liked them. Dell made good natured passes at her. Thizura made as many to Allun, often leaning across to brush against the blonde, a hand here, a graze of lips there. It was clear what relationship the two of them shared. And Crayl, who was older than the others, sat and observed, only occasionally adding a comment to the general fray. But she sensed that he led them. She saw it in the calm serenity of his lined gray eyes, in the way that even Thizura paid attention on the event when he spoke.

"What company did you travel with?" It was Crayl who finally leaned across and asked her.

She spoke the name of the master of the company who had bought her in her youth. Crayl drew his brows. "How long were you with him?"

"A few years." She said hesitantly.

"I see. He taught you little."

"She sings like an angel." Dell defended her.

"Yes." Crayl agreed. "But she has other, unexplored talents."

Lily shivered. The other three looked at her as if she had suddenly turned blue.

"I think its time to strike up a tune." Thizura said, waving an arm at the tavern which over the last hour had started to fill with men finished with their day's labors.

They went to a space cleared by the hearth and began to play. The conversation lulled, men's attentions drawn by the smooth flow of music. They started with a long song about the rites of spring, the fertility of the ground and of women. It was a favorite northern anthem. Allun sang and the others joined in on the chorus. It was beautiful, but Lily found her mind wondering. What had Crayl meant? The same thing the Master had when he'd taken her? The same thing Yoko claimed to have sensed? And why would he have expected the master of a company of musicians to have taught her more than the ways of song?

Keitlan brought him his supper in the study and he could see on her face the overwhelming desire to berate him for closeting himself within its walls. Even his servants had grown complacent enough with his presence to dare and lecture him. He gave her a cold, dangerous stare while she stood with dialogue on the tip of her tongue, until she blanched and thought better of spewing it at him and backed away. There had been unease in her eyes, even a hint of fear. There had been a time when every servant in the castle had shown him fear. Now they barely remembered to show deference. Fear or lassitude. He did not know which he preferred. There seemed to be such a lack in proper middle ground. The one had almost driven him insane. The other would likely be his downfall if every enemy of his felt the same lack of respect that Helo Vran had exhibited.

He picked at his dinner, having little appetite. He should have been thinking about bandit alliances aimed against him and his, but he couldn't keep the train of thought. He would find himself staring out the window without even recalling walking to it; or into the flame of the candle burning on his desk. Unbidden he remembered the fire of the lash biting into his skin. He flinched involuntarily and drew breath. The sweaty heat of the Prophet's body pressed against his back, the stale breath against his neck, the sordid, ripping, impact of violation. The candle went crashing against a wall and lay there rocking, its flame trying to grasp hold of the edge of carpet. He put it out with a thought and filled his glass from the bottle Keitlan had brought him with supper. He downed it and emptied the last of the liquid into his glass. Chase the memories away that way when he couldn't manage to do it from will power alone.

Schneider wanted him to go away and heal. With Schneider things were black and white. He didn't understand the gray areas. Healing was such a insidious little word. How did one escape the baggage in one's own head? If it had been as easy as erasing a slave tattoo he would have. If it was as easy as hunting the girl down and making her sing one of those haunting melodies of hers to make the pain go away, he would have. Except it would have only lasted a little while. And he couldn't abide the fear in her eyes.

He was weary, sleep having been elusive of late. He finished the wine and walked towards his rooms. Caught a serving girl on the way and told her to fetch another bottle of wine. The night promised to be aswarm with bad dreams. He flopped down upon the bed fully dressed, lay across it sideways and stared at the shadows of the ceiling. They hinted at hidden demon faces in the depths. Things waiting to come out when sleep left him defenseless. He used to see them all the time as a child. So very long ago. But they hadn't all been imagination. Unearthly, fey things that other children only imagined they saw, had been clear to him with his half human blood. He had known that some of the things that went bump in the night were real. They tormented children because they were powerless. They never bothered him once he had the ability to destroy them or harness them for his own use. He dared one to test the shadows of this castle now.

What he got was the timid knock of the servant returning with his wine. She sat the tray with bottle and goblet on the table by the fire and scurried out. There was proper respect there. Or perhaps merely fear of his black mood. He slumped into the chair beside the table, taking bottle and goblet in hand. She'd brought him a heady western red. It looked like blood in the goblet. He imagined it so, swirling it in the cup -- thick, crimson blood, let fresh from a vein. Trailing down lacerated flesh.

"Stop." He hissed, dizzy from wine and lack of sleep and all the morose gyrations of his mind. He frightened himself with such dark musings. In the corners the shadows gathered, expectant, scenting some brief insinuation of weakness. He shot up out of the chair. Grabbed the bottle and stalked out of his rooms. Down to the main hall where two maids worked late into the night by the low burning fire.

"Out." He snapped even as they looked up in surprise. They hastily gathered sewing, curtseyed nervously and vacated the hall. It was great and empty and dark now, light only by the weak light of the great hearth. With warm weather coming on its fires were not banked so high.

He sat in his high backed chair. It was comfortably cushioned now, thanks to Yoko. All the chairs at the high table were. He put the wine on the table and sat like a predator in the dark, waiting for something that might not even come. He'd killed a man at this table today. Men had died in this hall before and by his hand. Men had died aplenty at his direction and he'd never blinked an eye. He should have killed every bandit that dared his hall and yet killing just the one had sent him upstairs in a fit of unease. How many deaths before there was no chance at redemption?

Redemption? No. That wasn't his word. It was the Prophets. How could what the Prophet spewed get so tangled up with his own thoughts? He didn't know how to unravel the knots of convolution.

One of the main doors cracked open and he sank deeper into the chair, watching. The girl slipped in, softly pushing the doors shut behind her. She had a natural quiet grace about her. She kept to the shadows, as if she were afraid to be caught unawares in the light. She did not have her lute with her. She moved towards the stairwell leading up, ignorant of any other presence in the hall. He would have let her pass by, still ignorant if the burning question of fear had not still plagued him.

"Are you afraid of me?"

He voiced the question. Not loud, but enough to carry through a hall as silent as death. She froze at the bottom of the stairs, her head swinging around in shock to scan the room. She saw him and her shoulders tensed. Her head went down to let the hair fall across her face. She stood silently for a moment and he thought she wouldn't answer at all. Then her head came back up and she said. "No."

Almost he didn't hear her, it was so quietly spoken. He didn't believe her.

"Why not?" There was malice in the question. She lied to him and surprisingly enough it hurt.

She shook her head, looked about the shadows of the hall as if she too was wary of the demons that lurked in them, then back to him. "Why are you down here all alone, my lord?"

He hadn't expected that. Not a question to his question. He thought he would gift her with the truth. It was colder than any fabrication. "Because when I sleep the nightmares come."

Her mouth opened. She took a hesitant step towards him. Another.

"Of _him?" _ She whispered, as if she were broaching a dread secret. He looked away, not willing to go that far in his confession, even though, of all the people here, of all the people in the world, she knew best what he had endured.

"I dream about him too, sometimes." She said, sounding frightened. "I wake up and think I'm back there."

Kindred souls then. He dreamed that all the time, even when he was awake. "How long -- were you there?"

She made a little helpless sound. "I -- don't know, my lord. Six, seven months. Maybe more. Time looses meaning in a place like that. No night. No day." She shuddered. His own was hidden in the shadows. Seven months or more and she was still sane. He was amazed at her resiliency. He had lost his own after a mere month.

He had asked her before why she had bothered to try and help him and she had given him useless answers. He asked her again.

"Why bother, Lily? Why did you bother with me?"

With her head back her saw her eyes widen. Her breath quickened in her chest, one slender hand seemed to flutter as if she did not know what to do with it. She looked terrified, which only confirmed her earlier lie.

"Because I was alone." She whispered, sounding stricken. "Because no one would talk to me and I abhorred silence. Because you were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen blood and all and I thought you might talk to me. Because I was selfish."

Then she fled. Just whirled and ran up the stairs as if the hounds of hell were on her heels. He sat staring at the place she had been, nonplused. She had come to him as a means to escape the torture of silence Angelo had placed upon her and he had spared her few words, so wrapped up had he been in his own misery. And yet she had come again and again, to gift him with her presence when he had offered nothing in return. Selfish. That was no more her word than Redemption was his own.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath57.htm



	57. Chapter 57

aftermath57

Fifty-seven

Gara shifted in the saddle, shading his eyes with a hand as he scanned the distant forest line. Captain Kiro sat beside him, frowning darkly, caressing the hilt of the sword riding sheathed in its saddle harness. The man was uneasy and justly so with a city and outlying provinces to worry about and bandits very likely on the warpath. They'd seen the ones who'd dared the gates of Sta-Veron on their way. Established patrols about the city and tripled the guard about the walls, but a good bandit -- just like a good ninja could bypass the most strident effort of watchful guardsmen. A city was just too big to fully isolate. They might have done it in winter, when the travelers were few and far between, but with the onslaught of spring, merchants and mountaineers arrived daily at the gates of the city.

"He should have killed them all." Kiro said blackly. "It was a mistake not to."

Gara grunted, thinking the same thing himself, but surprised to hear Kiro vocally admonish his lord's actions. Kiro was Kall-Su's staunchest supporter. But Kiro was seeing what was obvious to anyone close to the matter; that his lord was shaken and not behaving in his usual manner.

"I should have had it done myself, once they were outside the walls." Kiro said.

"Maybe." Gara agreed. "You would have caught hell for it."

"Better that than have them sparking the fires of revenge among Helo Vran's men. Nomads for the gods sake! No one commands the nomads. If what they said was true -- they are not a people I wish to see spill over into our lands."

"Can't be worse than the beastmen across the eastern mountains."

Kiro gave him a wary, strained look. "I've commanded beastmen and fought against them. They're slow witted with crude goals. Nomads are smart and believe me, any people who live year round on the Tundra are tougher than you might imagine. I should have killed those bandits."

"Well, its too late now. Unless you want to hunt them down . . ."

"No. But they will return sooner or later."

Probably, Gara thought, riding back towards the walls of Sta-Veron. Nothing was ever easy, nor did the short periods of peace in his life seem destined to linger. Arshes was on the wall when he rode in. She called down to him, a shadowed figure against the glare of morning sunlight.

"No marauders on our doorstep?" she called down.

"Not at the moment." He dismounted, handing the reins to one of the soldiers at the guard station. He joined her on the wide walk atop the wall. She was lightly armored today. Shoulder armor, bracers. Shin guards over white leather trousers that hugged her slim legs. She wore her great sword across her back. Very beautiful against the pale sky. Very dangerous. She had about her an anxious look. Tense and nervous. She paced along the walk, and Gara strolled at her side, figuring she would talk to him when she was ready. He had not seen her last night after the meeting between Kall-Su and the bandits. He'd been out all night with Kiro making certain the bandits were well and truly gone from Sta-Veron.

"So, how did it go last night?"

"You haven't heard?"

"Not from you."

"Bandit chieftain wants to become something more. Kall didn't take his demands well. There are likely to be incursions along the northern border."

"Yes. Yes. That I understand. I was told that you and Darshe had words."

"Oh, you mean that. Well just a few actually."

"And?"

"And nothing. He was unusually civil."

"Civil as compared to the last time you and he had words?"

Gara shrugged.

"I hate this." She hissed. "I hate you being at odds with him. I hate being angry at him because of it. I hate the fact that he won't talk to me."

"I wish I knew what to do, Arshes." Gara sighed. "He's going to feel what he wants to feel and you or I can't change that. He's getting better, I think. I'm alive, aren't I?"

She sniffed, as if that statement was not one that amused her. She turned her back to the outer wall and looked at him. "How can he punish me for finding you when he abandoned me long ago for Yoko?"

"He's a hypocrite and he's selfish. You didn't know this?"

She drew her brows as if it were only starting to sink in. Gods, there was a time she would have flown into a defensive rage if anyone had dared to denounce the center of her universe. Now she merely scowled darkly and gave the accusations deep and serious consideration. She nodded finally, as if giving her pledge of approval.

"I think," she said. "That I shall speak to Yoko. Perhaps at dinner tonight."

Both Gara's brows shot up. Arshes and Yoko were not the best of friends. Arshes generally considered Yoko a plague that had infected Schneider to which there seemed no cure. It was not a point of view that provoked deep conversation. "About what, prey tell?"

"Well, she seems to have this mystical power to sway him that no one else does. Perhaps she might influence him in this."

Right. Yoko would happily convince Schneider to make nice to his former lover. Yoko wasn't jealous of Arshes at all. Just like Arshes wasn't resentful of Yoko. Gara honestly didn't know what he felt about the subject. Uneasy at best. What he did know was that he personally did not wish to be present during such a conversation.

Cook went to particular trouble with supper. Probably because last night's goings on had stirred everyone in the castle into gathering together to discuss the ramifications and possibilities. Those of Kiro's commanders that he did not have patrolling the forests to the north had all made appearances, with their ladies in close attendance. Geo Note who was to leave on the morrow had invited the old priest of Eno Marta to come and converse with him on his last evening in Sta-Veron. The city constable had come at Kiro's behest to discuss keeping a closer eye to suspicious travelers come to market. The man had drawn in his wake a few of the local gentry who had occasion -- and enough prestige and wealth -- to present themselves in Sta-Veron castle. They brought with them a gimpish juggler and an acrobat to entertain the host during the meal and the doubtless interesting conversation that would take place after it. The second best table was pulled up and sat perpendicular to the main one to seat the unusual number of diners. The lesser tables where the common guardsmen and those servants who were off duty sat, were lined against the walls.

Yoko had not seen so many folk since winter festival. And then she'd hardly been in the mood to socialize, having been recently and cruelly abandoned by Rushie. The thought of those dark days brought on a pang of disquiet, which she quickly forced away lest it ruin the good mood she found herself enjoying. They were all so worried about bandits plaguing the north, as if they hadn't enough wizardly power gathered here to dispense with an army of ruffians. But, men were men and would dwell on violent goings on with single minded determination. She had no interest in being dragged into conversations about villages raided and traps laid in the mountains. She had rather go and spend time with father, who was leaving tomorrow morning. Rushie declined to join her where Geo Note sat. He did it with such snide distaste that she glared reproachfully before disengaging her arm from him and marching away. Let him fend for himself then, listening to boring guard talk. Goddess knew he wouldn't condescend to talk to Gara, whose company he enjoyed -- when he wasn't mad at him. And Kall-Su never lowered himself to attend these impromptu gatherings -- even before his present malaise. He hated crowds of noisy, chattering people.

She sat down next to father, his aide moving a chair down to make room for her. The old priest nodded to her warily, no doubt vividly recalling the fight with Rushie on the doorstep of his temple. The old hedge witch, Ayntha, sat across from Geo Note, having come to bid the man who had helped her flee the wrath of the lumber baron Thrax farewell. She had sat up a little tent within the market to sell her charms. Here in the north such things were well received. Yoko wasn't sure, but she thought Rushie had had a hand in helping the old woman start anew here. He hadn't said as much -- of all the things in the world to be modest about, he chose charity -- but Yoko knew he rather liked the old woman, and she'd come with nothing but the clothes on her back. Certainly not enough to set up a charm and portent business on her own.

The kitchen girls brought out pictures of sweet cider and heady, dark ale, baskets of fresh baked bread along with crocks of honey sweetened butter. The hum of masculine conversation buzzed about the hall. The lighter tones of women talking eagerly about what might be expected to come in with the spring trade caravans lay underneath it. There was concern there as well, that the tension last fall with the south might effect the trade. That the few luxuries they had here might be withheld. One hoped not. One hoped that Larz had discovered the truth behind the Prophet and managed to sway the opinion of the people. One hoped fervently against the conflict of religion that Geo Note thought possible.

The fool was bouncing before their table, juggling four red balls, jabbering nonsense. Father's aide found him terrible amusing. Yoko found him a bit tiresome and just on the verge of annoying. She pondered giving him advice not to attempt to entertain Rushie, whose tolerance for such idiocies was practically non-existent. But the juggling fool bounded away to harass the acrobat who was flipping and jumping across the cleared floor. A spattering of laughter went up around the room when the fool collided with the acrobat and the both of them went sprawling.

Yoko sighed. There was a decided lack of refined taste here in the cold north.

If Kall-Su had known there were so many people gathered in his hall he would never have come down. Of late the collection of people that actually ate together had been dwindling. Schneider had been in a mood with Gara and Arshes, so both ninja master and Thunder Empress had been leaving the castle and venturing into the city to find dinner and whatever else they partook of that kept them late into the night and sometimes well into morning. Yoko and Schneider often missed meals altogether and one could not help but hear Keitlan grumbling about the two of them closeting themselves in Yoko's chambers. So it was mostly just a few guards and servants that sat along the lesser tables. The kitchen staff ate in the kitchen, everyone else, including the other domestics ate in the hall. One had to assume the girl did too.

Although he had to admit to a certain ignorance in the hierarchy of his staff or where the girl was in it, she had to eat sometime. And after having her creep into his thoughts on more than one occasion during the day, coming down to take his dinner in the hall on the off chance that she might be about somewhere had not seemed a far fetched thing to do. It was his castle after all. No one might fault him for taking dinner where ever he wished. Besides he dared not --- most assuredly dared not -- go so far as to inquire of Keitlan or any of her overly talkative staff when and where a laundry girl too her meals.

He was not even certain he really wanted to do more than merely see her in the flesh to concrete the vision of her that had teased him all day.

He almost quit the idea altogether and retreated upstairs when the noise and the sense of a great many bodies hit him. He was hesitating on the bottom step when Arshes slunk silently down the stairs behind him -- obviously picking up some of Gara's habits -- and drawled silkily.

"Going to bless us with your presence tonight, Kall-Su? Who should we offer thanks to?"

He glared at her. But he had to step down onto the hall floor to make way for her, and she wrapped her fingers about his arm, as if she needed escort into the room. Or more likely, and more accurately, she thought he might retreat back into the recesses of his upstairs haven. She had always taken pleasure in foiling his designs.

He called her a bad name under his breath and she laughed, those great elvin ears sharper than a fox on the hunt.

"You too." She was amused at his expense, but it was strained. There was something else on her mind.

"Look, Darshe, I've brought you company." She accompanied him to his place, foremost and center in the midst of this gathering. Schneider looked up at her darkly, then ignored her and focused on Kall-Su. He half smiled and lifted his cup.

"I thought you only came down to piss off bandits and create frozen, bloody messes on the carpet?"

He thought evil things about Schneider too, but with so many eyes upon him, had no recourse but to slip into his chair and let a serving girl bring him a cup and fill it , then place a clean platter, knife and two pronged fork before him. Arshes stood a moment more between his and Schneider's chairs, then went away without a word.

"Why are all these people here?" He took a deep drought of his ale. Schneider was toying with his. He leaned upon the arm of his chair to list closer to Kall-Su. "Why, to talk about last night's goings ons. Obviously these people are starving for entertainment to get so worked up over a little thing like that. A little war would probably do them good."

"Gods." Kall-Su rolled his eyes in annoyance. He let his attention wonder to the lesser tables, where guardsmen and servants broke bread and drank coarser ale than that which graced the main table. The girl wasn't there. He really hadn't expected her to be. Not amidst this crowd. She was a shy creature and not much inclined towards boisterous conversation. A dislike he shared.

An acrobat cartwheeled across the floor, a pantalooned fool, galloping after on all fours, barking like a dog. He stared, aghast. And people were uneasy that bandits had occupied this hall. If they were going to attempt entertainment, at least let it be palatable. Which brought to mind the girl and her lute that she took into town to ply her talents nights. How disconcerting that the drunken patrons of some lowly tavern were able to hear her sing and the lord of the city was beset with barking fools and squealing acrobats. Not fair at all, when he very much wanted to hear her sing again.

A serving girl sat a platter of select meats before him. Others came with steaming accompaniments. He touched the girl's wrist before she could withdraw.

"I cannot eat with those creatures scampering about the floor. Go tell your mistress to have them withdraw."

She nodded, wide eyed that he'd spoken to her. She started to withdraw and he took a breath and plunged forward with the request he truly wished. "There's a girl who works in the castle who plays the lute, isn't there?"

"Yes, milord. Lily."

"Find her and ask her to come and play for us."

The girl nodded again and hurried away. Schneider stared at him, both brows raised. Kall pretended not to notice it.

"You know very well what her name is?" Schneider accused lazily. "And you know very well she's a minstrel. What are you playing at, Kall?"

"Nothing. She sings well, if I recall and anything would be preferable to those two fools."

Schneider sat back, swirling his ale, a sly smile twitching at the corner of his lips. "Have you ever been able to lie to me and me not know it? Ever?"

Kall sniffed disdainfully, concentrating on picking a few pieces of meat from the tray. Anything but meet Schneider's too penetrating blue stare. "I don't recall ever lying to you."

"Ha! Right. Shall I name some specifics?"

"I would prefer not." Stiffly.

Schneider leaned in close and whispered. "You can play Ice Lord to everybody else, but I can read behind those pretty eyes of yours. You're after something. The little slave girl? She made an impression, humm? Why not just take her?"

"I am not. She did not. She is no longer a slave."

"Oh, that's right. You freed her of that burden. Magnanimous gesture. Since when did you start caring about the little people on a personal basis?"

Kall cut his eyes about to glare at Schneider. "You are offensive. I do not wish to continue this conversation." He hissed it in a low undertone, having no wish to entertain those around them.

"When's the last time you took a lover, Kall? I can't even remember. What's the point of having all the power if you can't enjoy it? Or won't? Did you take vows of celibacy behind by back?"

Kall-Su truly, dearly wanted to summon a particularly nasty blast of power and smite Schneider where he sat. Only it would take out half the room with it and probably not accomplish the goal of sealing Schneider's lips. There were times when one could truly despise him. Then he happened to observe something equally as devastating as a high impact implosion spell and waved a hand across the room.

"Why don't you worry about your own affairs. It looks as if Yoko and Arshes are commencing negotiations."

Schneider's head jerked up. He straightened in his chair, eyes following Kall's gesture. Arshes had approached Yoko, bent to speak to her, and the two of them were retreating down to the end of the second table where there were a few empty chairs and a slim buffer of privacy.

"What the hell is that about?" he muttered.

Kall could have cared less, as long as it diverted Schneider's predatory instincts away from him.

Yoko was wary, to say the least, of an invitation to private converse from the Thunder Empress. Arshes Nei, under the best circumstances they had ever shared -- those times when Rushie was far and away and not thought to be coming back -- had never engaged Yoko in private and heartfelt dialogue. She did not know quite what to say in the midst of such an unforeseen situation, so she smiled weakly and waved a hand to encompass the room at large.

"Rather a large turn out for dinner tonight."

"I want to talk about Schneider." Arshes had never been one for trivial conversation. Her brown eyes bore into Yoko's as if she were preparing for battle. Yoko blinked, eyes traveling reflexively to the main table where the aforementioned subject of discussion sat.

"All right." Yoko agreed carefully. "What about him?"

Arshes took a breath. "He hasn't spoken a word to me since -- since he walked in on Gara and I in my room a week past. It is not reasonable or fair for him to hold such a grudge. Not after all the times he's done the same to me."

Oh, that was a thinly veiled way of saying, _not after he betrayed me with you._ Yoko chewed her lip uncomfortably, uncertain what was expected of her. Of why Arshes chose to come to her with such a complaint.

"No," she agreed softly. "It's not fair. I'm sorry he hurts you."

"I want you to talk to him."

"I have. I made him promise not to harm Gara."

"Gara's not who he's really angry at. He'll speak to Gara. I need you to make him forgive me."

Yoko blinked at the sudden pain in Arshes Nei's voice. The half elf truly did anguish over Rushie's scorn. "I can't _make_ him do anything, Arshes."

"If not you, then no one can. You can make him see reason. For some reason I've never fathomed, he'll listen to you when he will no one else. Please. I know I lost a part of him to you -- and I don't covet it now that I have Gara --"

Yoko lifted a dubious brow at that. Arshes seemed not to notice at all.

"-- but I miss the friendship we shared. I miss the Darshe who raised me and taught me magic and how to fight and how to stand up for myself. Talk to him. Get him to talk to me."

Not quite what Yoko had expected of dinner conversation. Not what she had expected at all. But she was a glutton for defending hurt feelings and Arshes had as bruised a look in her eyes as Yoko had ever seen.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath58.htm



	58. Chapter 58

aftermath58

Chapter fifty-eight

Lily had finished her day's duties under the wash mistress, ran clean water in the cool stone environs of the wash room to rinse away the days accumulated sweat and dirt and slipped upstairs to change into the clothing that would transform her from castle servant to minstrel. Crayl had invited her to come and play with his little band of minstrels this night. A song or two after she finished at the White Hare. She was ecstatic that she had been invited. A chance to prove to them her talent. A chance that they might invite her to travel with them when they left Sta-Veron.

She had lute in hand when Setha came bounding into the room, out of breath and bright eyed with barely suppressed excitement. The girl saw her and a her face broke into a wide grin.

"Lily! I was afraid I wouldn't catch you before you left. You're to come downstairs and play."

Lily stared at her silently, not understanding why she was to do such a thing and waiting for an explanation.

"There are guests aplenty in the hall for dinner. All come to talk about Helo Vran and his impudence. Some of the city lordlings brought a jester, but he was more pitiful than funny and his lordship said he didn't want to watch him during dinner and asked that you come down and entertain them. Isn't that wonderful? Guard captains and ladies and rich merchants tip well."

"Wh--who asked for me to play?" Lily could not quite get past that one sentence in amidst the rest of Setha's babbling.

"Lord Kall-Su, silly. Didn't I just say as much?"

"L-l-lord K-K-" She couldn't get the name out she was so astounded. Her fingers gripped the neck of the lute so hard the strings made a twanging sound of protest. Fear, trepidation, thrill raced through her. It was so much more dramatic request than Crayl's and so much more frightening.

"I can't." She stammered. "I've promised to play at the White Hare."

"The White Hare can wait. You'll never get another chance like this. Isn't it every minstrel's dream to be asked to play for lordly listeners? Besides which, you can't just refuse when our lord commands."

"He commanded?"

Setha gave her an impatient look. "He asked didn't he? It amounts to the same thing. Come on. You've already got your lute."

Setha took her arm, pulling her from the room and down the narrow servant's hall. Lily couldn't gather her thoughts the entire way down. Just followed dumbly in the other girl's footsteps. He'd asked to hear her play. He'd asked her if she was afraid of him. Oh, gods, gods, she wasn't -- not when she truly thought about it, but she was afraid of this sudden interest. She was afraid to go down there and have him watch her, afraid that she would fall apart under the scrutiny. That everyone would know how infatuated the silly former slave girl was with the lord of this castle. They would laugh at her and she would die from shame.

Setha pulled her into the hall. No one noticed her, everyone engrossed in a savory smelling feast and an undulating buzz of conversation. Keitlan bustled over, looking harried and displeased. She cast a dark glance back at the hall, muttering under her breath about not having enough for second courses if everyone kept eating as much as they were and the rudeness of dinner guests showing up without at least a day's proper notice. Then she glared at Lily, as if Lily were personally responsible.

"Well, girl, I trust you'll do better than the fool and the tumbler. Go to it, then and take their minds from food Cook didn't have forewarning to prepare."

Lily took a breath. Another huge one to chase away the terror. For everything she was or was not the rest of the time, when she performed, she was a professional. She knew the paths to charm her audience. She knew the ways of garnering attention when she sat with a lute across her lap. Attention that she despised at any other time. She straightened her back, trapped into this now, and softly asked of Keitlan.

"Could you have a stool brought out for me, please."

Setha ran and got one, brought it out and sat it in the center of the open floor space. Lily's vision centered on that spot. No different than playing at a tavern, or in a gypsy circle where travelers stopped for a bit of rest and a night of song and dance. Those traveling players -- those gypsies had been the first to teach her how to charm an audience. How to steal their attention in music and dance and whatever else might earn a coin to line their pockets. No different this. Setha was right. The gratification here might be worth the effort. Find that frame of mind she'd been taught by the wanderers and seduce them all.

She walked out to the lonely chair and the conversation hardly faltered. No one noticed her, or if they did, found enough interest to pause to see what she might do. Surreptitiously her gaze swept the hall. Soldiers and their ladies, servants and guards. A wizard or two, the tunics of priests. Avoid looking at the main table, because her downfall was there. She struck a chord and began a melody. No words this. Merely an enchanting tune that would slowly make them aware that there was a harper in their midst. It was a tavern tactic, a way to draw in a noisy, drunken crowd and make them receptive to her workings. She bent over the lute and let herself be drawn into the music, floating with the currents of her creation. The end of the melody melted into a song with lyrics. A rite of spring song that she'd played nightly at the White Hare. The people here seemed to embrace anything to do with the escape from winter.

The conversations did not stop, but they became softer, as people half listened to the song. She did a lighthearted tune about the fisherman's daughter and her dilemma over a netted fish that promised a wish if she let it go. There was a spattering of applause, mostly from the lesser tables where the guards sat after that. Their appreciation was the only thing that let her know she had worth. It always had been and she gathered it in and hoarded it like a miser with his gold.

One tried not to appear entirely enthralled. Especially with Schneider's malicious presence close by. But it was difficult. He would have appreciated her talents even had she been some harper fresh from the road that he'd never seen before. She perched on her stool, voluminous red skirt falling about her legs, one knee propped up so she might rest the lute upon it. The hem of the skirt parted to reveal slim calf and sandled foot. Her toe tapped in time with the music she made. Her hair hid her eyes most of the time, but one could see her lips moving to form the words. Naturally red lips and white teeth. There was something almost elemental about her when she sang. Some vague underlying sense of strength that she hid so well the rest of the time.

She wouldn't look in his direction, which annoyed him on one level and granted some relief on another. If she didn't look at him, then he wouldn't have to pretend the glance did not effect him. He slouched back in his chair, steepling his fingers under his chin. There had to be a solution to this foolishness. He did not know this girl. He had barely exchanged words with this girl. If he was beholden for her generosity in the past, then he had discharged that debt. He owed her nothing, save that occasionally dreams of her voice and her rare looks chased away more dire nightscares.

"She's not half bad." Schneider said grudgingly. "They're still over there talking."

Kall-Su did not comment, although his eyes did flicker momentarily away from Lily to the place where Yoko and Arshes Nei sat. One might, if one was vindictive, wish uncomfortable things to happen to Schneider as a result of that détente.

She began a love song and the females in attendance, both guest and servant, tittered appreciatively. For the most part the men still talked about bandits and military strategy. He half heard Kiro talking to Gara two chairs down from his own. Half heard Kiro's expressed worry about the bandits that had but recently been driven out of Sta-Veron.

"--- still would rather know they're long gone than worry about fifteen vengeful men lurking in the forests beyond the city. If they haven't flown straight back to their master, they'll be hell on trappers and the like coming down to market."

"My offer still stands to hunt them down."

Kall-Su frowned, attention pulled further away from the songstress by the muted discussion. He had not been at his most attentive the day the bandits had ridden into the city, but ---

"15?" He leaned towards Kiro. His captain looked at him blankly. Gara lifted a brow, equally curious at his sudden interest in their talk.

"There were 20 or more on the road in."

Kiro kept staring, his raw boned face slowly turning a shade of agitated pink. "The gate guard stopped them, my lord. Confiscated their weapons. There were only fifteen men. We only escorted fifteen out of Sta-Veron. Are you sure you're not mistaken?"

"I don't make mistakes like that."

"Which means there are five, minus the one Kall iced, still loose in the city." Gara surmised. "Makes sense. I wouldn't have sent my whole force in in one lump group. Not if I was planning on creating some mischief."

"But --" Kiro started, beginning to look very upset.

"How many merchants or trappers or caravans from highland towns came in that day? Did you keep track of every one of them? Or only the dangerous looking ones."

"Damnit." Kiro cursed, pushing back from his chair. He beckoned sharply to his commanders and men broke their conversations. "My lord," He promised stiffly to Kall-Su. "If we've made such a mistake, then I will see it corrected."

He marched towards the door, stopping to collect the city constable on his way out and converging with his men, pausing to give them hushed directions, before the lot of them hurried outside. The hall was suddenly emptied of over half its occupants. The remaining ladies and servants, stared at the egression with wide, uncertain eyes. Lily had faltered in her playing, twisted on her stood to watch the departing backs. She turned about and for one brief moment, while everyone else looked towards the doors, her eyes locked with Kall-Su's. She was breathless from the songs, and there was a reckless, almost brazen light in her eyes, as if the music invigorated her. Or empowered her.

He broke the stare first, unnerved by the directness in her eyes when before there had been none.

"Well, I'd say dinner is over." Schneider drawled. He was looking across the room, where Arshes and Yoko had risen, one walking towards the doors, the other along the back of the tables towards them. She stopped behind Schneider's chair and slipped her arms around his neck.

"What's going on?"

"They missed a couple of bandits." Schneider said, twisting his head to look up at her. Yoko smiled benignly. "Oh. Well, it will give them something to do, then. Lily was wonderful, don't you think? Much better than the fool and the acrobat."

"Much." Schneider agreed warily. "What were you talking about?"

"Oh, this and that. Kall, don't you think Lily was good?"

She had a look in her eyes that Kall-Su did not like. Yoko with a cause in her stubborn little head was a thing to be cautious of. He pushed back his chair, officially signaling that this dinner was over. The commander's wives were getting up, clustering together on their way towards the doors, the servants were scattering, taking plates and mugs towards the kitchens as they did. The priests -- or at least Geo Note and his aide, were coming towards them, probably with plans of bidding Yoko good night. Schneider was scowling while Yoko whispered to him to be good.

And Lily had slipped off her stood and was headed towards the main doors with her lute tucked under her arm, no doubt off to play in whatever tavern it was she took herself at nights to ply her musical trade. Having no wish to be caught in the middle of a dialogue between Schneider and Geo Note he retreated along the table and down the side of the hall towards the stairs leading up. Lily disappeared through the doors. He hesitated at the bottom of the steps, thinking about bandits loose in his city and hapless girls traveling the streets alone at night. She shouldn't have been out at the hours she kept even without the threat of cutthroats.

He passed the stairs and continued on to the doors. Stepped outside into a cool, star filled night and surveyed the courtyard. There were men being organized, torches and lanterns bobbing about the yard as guards ran here or there. Kiro was shouting at a group of men, perhaps the men who'd been on gate duty when the bandits had come in. The castle gates were open, men riding out in small companies or marching out afoot. If they accomplished anything tonight other than alarm the populace he would be surprised. And if he walked through that yard he'd have more questions and demands of his person than he wished to deal with. It was easier just to whisper a word; conjure a flight spell and rise silently up into the darkness. He came to earth on the other side of the wall in the shadows of a building just outside the gates. She was just passing through the gates, slipping around a pair of horses skittish at being roused so late and put to duty. She clutched the lute to her breast and looked back at them as she hurried on. He almost let her pass, calling himself a fool and a lackwit for having more concern for a mere girl than he did for the threat of bandits loose in the city.

"Its dangerous to wonder the streets alone at night."

She almost squealed when he did step out behind her from the shadows. She backed a few steps up, head up and eyes a little wild with the fright he'd given her. She kept staring at him, breathing hard, as if he were some demon come to claim her soul. And she'd said she didn't fear him. He half smiled at that ironic little lie. They all did at some level or another. Every mortal being he'd ever had a connection to - with the possible exception of Gara -- eventually grew to fear him and what he was. It was only the immortal ones, the ones with the connection to the arcane, that clove to him.

"You frightened me." She said in a small, whispery voice.

"I know." He said sadly. "There are enemies loose in Sta-Veron. Best if you did not stray from the protection of the castle at night."

"Not my enemies." She said reasonably. "What grief would they have with me?"

She argued with his efforts to protect her and he could not come up with an answer that did not sound foolish or condescending to reply to her with. He did not quite know what to do in this situation he had thoughtlessly put himself in. What had he expected her to say? To ecstatically thank him for his concern and rush back to the safety of the castle?

"You're right." He said levelly, numbly. "I wasn't thinking." He didn't know why he admitted the last, save that it was blatantly true. She was staring at him. Actually staring without her hair hiding her eyes and he could not manage to collect his wits enough to utter something poised or elegantly cold in passing.

"You were interrupted before anyone had a chance to express their appreciation for your performance. Perhaps a few coins ---"

"I don't wish your silver." She cut him off, actually sounding a little angry.

He blinked at her, surprised. She took a breath and amended. "You're the master of this city, my lord. You need not pay for me to entertain you. It is my honor."

That was said with the voice of a consummate performer. An impersonal and well used speech that somehow managed to prick him. He looked away from her, nodding, wishing he had gone upstairs and let her go about her business. Wishing he could make proper decisions instead of the disastrous ones he'd been producing of late. He took a step away, wanting away from this embarrassment. She made a distressed little sound, reached out and touched his shoulder.

"You misunderstand, my lord." She said. "I've been beholden so long, I wish to earn my own way."

He didn't turn, couldn't quite manage to speak because her fingers still rested on his back and the touch was electric. Silly girl. She had earned it. He had not been prepared to offer her anything that her talents did not warrant. Perhaps she took his silence as offense, for she withdrew her hand and murmured an apology.

"Thank you for your kindness, my lord." She said softly, eyes downcast now, hair spilling over to cover her blush. "I'll be on my way. It isn't far."

He found his voice. "Where?"

She bit her lip and shifted the lute in her arms. "The White Hare Tavern and Inn."

"I'll see you there."

"Oh." A catch in her voice. "You don't have to do that, my lord."

No. But he might as well, having come this far. He took her under the elbow before she could protest further and started her moving. She ducked her head and walked at his side. After a few moments she looked up at him from under her hair.

"Do you know where it is?"

He had to admit to ignorance, not having the tendency to frequent the taverns and ale houses of his city.

"Three blocks up and to the left." She said.

He nodded silently. A pair of guards on horseback passed them on the street, but paid them no heed. Lily shied a little closer to Kall-Su at the swift passage of heavy horse body. There were people on the streets, the hour being relatively early as far as the night time revelers were concerned.

"I think you were right, about the bandits, my lord." She offered quietly, taking him off guard with that unexpected statement.

"I've heard the servants and the guardsmen talking," she continued, almost shyly. "And they all seem to think you should have --- done to all of them what you did to the one. Killing them all -- that would have been something the Master -- the Prophet would have done. You would have had all their blood on your hands then."

He drew a breath, half laughing. If she only knew how much blood stained his hands. She was so naive. "I've blood aplenty. Theirs would have made no difference."

She shuddered. Horrified, he thought, at that admission. But she surprised him by saying. "You're a fool, my lord, if you think that. You let the words of men like the Master taint you. I don't believe the words of the priests. You're only a sinner if you believe in the sin. There's nothing that can't be repaired, or forgiven or changed. See, even a slave can be a free woman again." She held up her hand, free of blemish for him to see. Behind it she smiled. An encouraging little lift of her lips. He did not know what to say to that optimism. Pessimistic musing were more his nature.

They came to the corner and turned it. "You can not understand." He told her quietly. She hadn't the scope or the years to comprehend all that he'd done.

She sighed, and stopped, pointed up the street and said. "It's just down there. I'll be fine from here on."

He inclined his head, sorry to part her company.

"Thank you." She said. Stood there hesitating as if she wanted to say more, then from down the street someone called her name.

"Lily, is that you little love?"

Her head swung around. Two men walked towards them. A tall red-head and a shorter, brown haired young man. They sauntered up, the former putting his hands familiarly on Lily's shoulders and the later looking Kall-Su up and down speculatively.

"We were worried when you didn't show up to meet us."

"Who's this? A new friend?" the shorter insisted. Kall narrowed his eyes at the familiar way the one had his hands on Lily.

"Ah --" Lily was floundering, not knowing quite how to answer.

"Since you are in the company of friends, I'll take my leave. I might suggest you get them to accompany you home." He inclined his head at her, ignored the two men, spun and strode away. He did not look back. He was annoyed for no good reason. He was not prone to jealousy. Not over a woman at any rate. Very few things had been denied him once he'd come into his power. He'd been on the verge of conquering the world and here he was, irritated over the fact that some drunken dandy was comfortable enough to put his hands on Lily -- a laundry girl -- when he himself could not bring himself to do it.

Schneider was right. He dearly needed to take the time to get his head together, because there was only so much irrationality he could tolerate from himself before he gave up and went completely mad.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath59.htm



	59. chapter 59

aftermath59

Chapter Fifty-nine

Lily twisted out from under Dell's hands and glared balefully up at the tall minstrel. Why ever did minstrel's have to be such a _friendly_ lot? She had never known a one who practiced proper decorum when it came to the opposite sex, or the same sex, depending on the minstrel in question. She'd seen Kall-Su's eyes ice up the moment Dell placed hands on her. Just turn hard and emotionless before he'd whirled and stalked away and all because Dell had a tendency towards familiarity.

"Who was that?" Thizura asked with a definite gleam of interest in his eyes.

One just didn't say, _the lord of this province,_ and not seem the fool or a liar.

"An acquaintance."

"Yummy."

"Where were you? Crayl sent us out to look and see if you'd been ambushed on the streets." Dell put his arm back around her shoulders and she let him guide her towards the lights and noise of the Tavern.

"I was asked to play at the castle." She said, still rather amazed at the fact herself. But not half so flabbergasted as she'd been at Kall-Su's appearance afterwards. She could hardly convince herself it had happened. He had been concerned for her. He had talked with her. Actually talked with her like a real person and not a lord to a slave -- a servant. He'd wanted to hear her play. She had touched him. Bold, bold, bold. How had she ever managed to work up the courage to do that? He had taken her elbow and walked her here. And Dell had ruined it. Come up and put his hands on her like she and he were closer than they really were and Kall-Su who could not know the ways of minstrels and performers -- had taken it at face value.

"You played for the Ice Lord?" Thizura wanted to know.

"Yes."

"Did you get lots of gold?"

"No."

"No? Whyever not?"

"I didn't." She said quietly, but firmly.

They exchanged looks over her head. "Sooo, was that a lover?" Dell asked.

"No!!" Vehemently.

"Ah. But someone you wish was?"

She blushed furiously, refusing to answer. Instead she asked. "You came to the White Hare looking for me? I thought I was to meet you after your own performance?"

"We decided to come and listen to you play. Obviously you didn't show."

Inside the tavern there was still a crowd. It was not so late that adamant drinkers would be driven home.

"We found her." Dell said, upon reached the table where Crayl and Allun sat. "She was playing at the castle."

"Was she now?" Crayl smiled up at her. "And did you woo them with your silvery voice, Lily?"

She blushed. Her face felt hot from the amount of blood rushing to it this night. She did not get the chance to sit down, for the barkeep, upon seeing her, bustled over, wiping his hands on a dirty towel.

"Where were you girl? Customers were asking for you."

"I'm sorry, I couldn't get away from the castle, master Harden." She explained.

He waved her excuse away. "No help for it then. Play a few songs for the latecomers at any rate."

"Yes, do. We came here to listen to you and won't be denied." Dell encouraged her.

So she sat down and played a string of popular favorites. A collection of small coins were tossed her way. A mediocre night at best, even for only half a set. The minstrels applauded energetically when she'd finished. One could not find a more obliging audience. They passed her a mug of ale when she sat back down with them and for a pleasant time talked shop.

"We're headed south in a month or so -- once summer hits full on. The western coastal cities are always awash with wealthy travelers that time of year." Crayl said. "There is a fair in Caban during mid-summer that every minstrel and performer worth their weight will attend. A great many master harpers will gather. There will be much to be learned. You ought to go."

She drew her breath, at a momentary loss. "I-- I've heard of the Caban Fair. I've never been. I would love to -- but I don't know if I could make my way alone."

"He's not asking you to go there alone." Thizura said with a mischievous grin.

"You could travel with us." Crayl said. "A female voice to blend in harmony would be a boon. And we've no one to sing the love ballads of heartbroken maidens."

"We would be honored to have you." Allun said softly, smiling briefly at her.

Her eyes grew round. How incredibly ironic that she should be invited to join their troop -- a thing she had wanted desperately up until two hours past when all her carefully constructed dreams of traveling the lands had been upset by a sudden show of interest from Kall-Su. How untimely that Crayl should ask her this when all she could think about was the lord of this city.

Crayl saw her hesitation. Must have seen the dilemma in her eyes, for he reached out and covered her small hand in his. "No need to decide now. We've the rest of spring till we leave. This is your home, I understand. Not so easy to up and leave."

It wasn't the place that pulled at her heart. And one had to be pragmatic. The thing that did was so far beyond her reach as to seem impossible. No matter that he took the trouble to see her through the streets on a dark night, or lifted the mark of a slave from her hand. "It's not a home to me." She said. "I've not lived here long. To travel to Caban Fair would be a dream come true for me. I think I would like very much to join you on the road there."

"All right, what were you talking about with Arshes?" Schneider shut the door to Yoko's room behind him and fixed her with a no nonsense stare as she turned to look at him with those large, innocent eyes of hers. Her room had become their sanctum. It was warmer than his, and insulated with carpets and wall hangings and pillows. It might as well be their room, since a good deal of his accumulated belongings were there. He had hardly slept anyplace else since their initial reconciliation.

"Whatever do you mean?" She inquired sweetly. Too sweetly, which made him wary. She slipped up to him, stood on tip toe and brushed the side of his mouth with a light kiss. "You are so paranoid."

"I'm not. I'm so not paranoid I'm careless, but you -- you -- make me nervous when you've got that look in your eyes."

"I make you nervous?" She put both hands to her chest in mock disbelief. She shrugged a moment later and flounced around to sit on the bed. She pulled one knee up and rested her chin on it, watching him. Not so innocent not to use a pout and a coy gaze from under her lashes to draw him forward against his better judgment, when he should have been pressuring her to discover what she was up to. But his curse had always been being too easily distracted by a pretty face. Yoko's welcoming one was an aphrodisiac he could not get enough of.

He put a knee on the bed beside her, leaning down to kiss her. She met him eagerly, falling backwards with him on top of her. With the advent of soft lips and softer breasts under his hands, suspicions retreated into the shadows. He trailed his lips down her neck to the hollow of her throat.

"Did you plan," she asked while he was attempting to work at the ties of her blouse. "To take Arshes as a lover when you found her as a child and took her under your protection?"

His fingers froze on the silk of her blouse. Hers were making little circles on his back. He could feel her nails through his shirt. It was damned distracting. The throbbing between his legs was even more so. Malevolent, crafty little witch to spring such a question when he was intent on pursuits of pleasure.

"I don't normally plan that far ahead." He ground out, irritation warring with arousal. "And I damned sure don't want to talk about it now. I thought I'd settled this with you?"

"With me, yes. I just want to be clear on a few things."

"What the hell has she been talking to you about?"

"You adopted her as your own daughter. Then something changed and you became lovers, is that right?"

"Yoko, Damnit!" He pushed himself off her, out of the mood suddenly and restless. Damn Arshes for bringing Yoko into this. As if Yoko's brand of interference could do anything but create a rift between them. He in no way wished to discuss this with her. He did not want to discuss it with anyone, more content to let the wound fester and become putrid. He did not admit weaknesses or wounds to anyone. Even to her.

He stood, with every intention of ending this conversation by walking out on it, but she made him hesitate with her next words.

"If our daughter had lived, would you have loved her as much as you did Arshes when she was a little girl?"

He drew a breath, narrowing his eyes. Mention of that lost child from her was not a thing he could ignore, or rail at her for. Whether she knew it or not, it was a effective weapon to use against him. He could not defend against it, so he stared at her silently, sullenly, refusing to answer. When he didn't, she went on.

"I mean even though she isn't of your flesh, Arshes was your daughter, wasn't she? Your first one. A first child is special. Didn't you want the best for her? Didn't it matter to you that she was happy?"

"She was happy." He hissed. A dozen -- a hundred instances flashed across his mind of the child and the girl Arshes Nei had been. Shy, quiet little girl that had turned into something more. Determined girl. Jealous girl. Oh so eager to make him proud of her achievements. He could not even recall now, when the turning point had come that changed their relationship forever.

"Don't you want to see her happy now?"

"This is not your business." He almost yelled it at her. He wanted out of this room. He did not want to think about the whys and wherefores when unreasoning anger served better. Unreasoning emotion had always served him better.

She did not take offense. She merely tilted her head and smiled sadly at him. "You don't hate her for betraying you. How can you hate a child you raised? You hurt her by this black mood you direct towards her. She loves you, you know and you've done far more to deserve her hate than she ever has to warrant yours."

He had never held himself accountable for any of the things he had done. No one had ever had the power to call him on them. Up until the point that Yoko had wormed her way into a position of surprising power in his life, he had never let himself feel regret or admit to guilt. It didn't matter that he bruised the people that he valued. He knew they would not desert him. There had been a war going on and world to conquer then, but now things seemed to have changed. The children he'd raised in his own image had concerns that did not solely revolve about him. Kall was more interested in preserving the north and the vestiges of his own warped guilt, and Arshes chose to elevate Gara in importance over him. The wound over that was more potent that the jealousy over her sharing his bed.

That realization struck and gnawed at him insidiously. And Yoko -- Yoko never let things rest. She was never content to take the easy route or the smooth course that might avoid conflict. She was too easily willing to tear into issues better left untorn. Things he might have preferred left unsaid. Perhaps that was one of the things he found irresistible about her. That stubbornness that reminded his own, yet stemmed not from any desire for self gain, but rather from one to truly help. Arshes was more like him. Or he had made her more like him. There had been a time when their goals had been the same. Power, the thrill of conquest. Somewhere along the way she had lost interest in that. He didn't know what she wanted now -- other than the ninja master. All the things before had been the things he had desired. She had lived her life mimicking his aspirations. The only time she ever seemed to create an agenda of her own was when she thought him dead and gone. The first time after Larz and Geo Note's little coup, she'd been gung ho to help create a Utopia governed by wizards -- which had all been a crock conceived by Abigail used to steer her in the direction he wanted. The second had been less grand, but perhaps more useful. Gone with Gara into the eastern mountains to help the destitute orphans and widows unfortunate enough to live in the path of the encroaching beastmen from the eastern plains. And she'd been willing to give it up at a moment's notice for him.

It was not his fault. He had never made her do anything. Her choices were and always had been her own. They had merely never collided with his interests or his feelings before. Not when she was free to make her own decisions at any rate. He had never put stipulations on their relationship. He had never needed to -- because he had trusted her to never betray him. He had trusted her like a daughter. And what was the greatest betrayal any daughter might perpetrate upon her father? To place another man above him in her heart. To give another man her loyalty and her trust.

He glanced at Yoko, quietly staring at him from the bed and wondered how much resentment Geo Note held against him for his daughter's blatant desertion. A faint smile touched his lips. A fair amount he'd wager.

"What?" She asked. "You're smiling and it's not a good smile."

He shook his head. "I won't discuss this tonight. If you insist then we'll both sleep alone."

She lifted a brow, considering that. "All right, then. My lips are sealed on the subject."

He was vaguely surprised at the capitulation. She was generally more doggedly stubborn in her arguments. She looked satisfied though, as if she saw something in his face that agreed with her sense of righteousness. He frowned darkly at that, but she ignored it and held out a hand.

He was more pensive when he lay beside her this time, thoughts distracted by other things. She did not seem to mind.

The gates to the city stood open. A half dozen sturdy wagons loaded with furs and other valuable resources of the north waited on the road outside. The merchant who owned them was ecstatic that his generosity in allowing the great priest Geo Note to travel with his party had been rewarded by an escort of ten mounted and armed soldiers from Kall-Su's garrison. There would be little danger of bandits on the trip south as a result.

It was little enough honor to grant a man as worthy as Geo Note. Little enough to make Yoko feel more comfortable with her father's departure. It was not a totally selfless act. Men of his accompanying Geo Note south and back into the heart of the alliance of southern kingdoms would be an invaluable source of information as to just what state those kingdoms were in. They would would serve as messengers for the Great Priest, if he felt the situation had escalated into something that might require outside assistance. Kall-Su had not yet decided if he would commit forces to such a thing as a holy war -- especially one brought on by the desertion of the Prophet, but Gara and Arshes Nei had pledged their support should Geo Note and Larz, ask it of them. One hardly knew what Schneider would do, but it might be assumed that preserving Larz or Geo Note's best interests were not high on his agenda.

He sat on his horse beside Kall-Su now, scowling and impatient as Yoko bid farewell to her father. She was crying and apologizing for not going with him. Schneider's frown grew darker each time an 'I'm sorry, father' escaped her lips. Gara patted her shoulders reassuringly, bending his head to speak with her privately. She threw her arms around him and cried even more. Schneider said something offensive under his breath.

"You'd think he was going to his death." He muttered afterwards.

Eventually Yoko unwrapped herself from Geo Note and he stepped towards Kall-Su and Schneider with her at his side. "Lord Kall-Su. Again, I thank you for your generosity. I shall see your men back in short order."

"Hopefully they'll return with good news." Kall said quietly.

"Goddess willing." The Great Priest agreed. Kall did not second the prayer.

"Good traveling." Gara wished from where he stood with Kiro and Arshes Nei. They had all come to see him away and the street leading to the gates were filled with curious bystanders, eager for a look at their lord and his wizardly companions. Kiro's men kept them at bay, armed soldiers and heavy horse dampening too much enthusiasm.

The Priest nodded at the ninja master, then with an audible breath turned his piercing eyes to Schneider, who had not bothered to dismount or utter a single word of farewell or good luck to the Great Priest. Schneider returned the stare petulantly.

"Since my daughter has chosen your company over mine, it is the very least you can do to promise me to see her well cared for. It is a father's prerogative."

"Do you doubt it, old man?" A faint, taunting smile touched Schneider's lips. Yoko frowned up at him. Geo Note sighed. The Great Priest was well aware of the futility of engaging in such a debate with Dark Schneider. None of them had the time to see it to its fruition with the merchant eager to be on his way.

"I'll be just fine, father." Yoko assured him, since Schneider was being stubborn. "We'll see each other again soon, I'm sure of it. Please be safe and don't worry about me."

She kissed him on the cheek one last time, then he inclined his head towards Kall-Su and took the reins of the horse his aide held out for him. The caravan started off, trundling southward. Yoko stood in the road for a bit watching. Then she realized everyone was waiting for her, and with a sigh, went to the little mare she'd ridden through the city streets upon.

With a clatter of hooves on cobblestones the whole of the party dispersed from the gates.

"You didn't have to be so mean." Yoko complained. Kall-Su only half heard Schneider's reply to that. They bickered back and forth for the span of several blocks. One learned to tune it out. The squeak of saddle leather and the sound of iron shod hooves on stones was more comforting.

People cleared a way for them on the streets. It was early still, and men were just traveling to their work. Merchants only now opening their stalls. There was the smell of smoke and various different breakfast feasts emanating from taverns and inns. The cries of children running in the streets, the barking of dogs and the yelling of men and women who bade each other good morn. A city waking. A pleasant city, Sta-Veron. A city full, for the most part, of honest, hard working people. Occasionally it amazed him that such a sturdy, healthy city owed allegiance to him. That such a people welcomed him as their lord, even knowing what he was. When he'd conquered it, decades ago, he'd had no more thought for the welfare or loyalty of its people than he'd held for any of the cities his armies had taken. It was not a thing that would have occurred to him then. Loyalties and allegiances were things that were taken by force and held by right of fear and power. Schneider had taught him that.

Only somewhere along the way, this province, with its harsh climate and its people that stubbornly hacked out a life here all the year round, fighting the long winters and the systematic raids from nomads to the north -- had started to appeal to him. It had been a place away from the glitter and the political machinations of the south that proved a valuable refuge. Schneider had ridiculed him for making it the place he returned to time and again during the latter years of their conquest of the south. But, Schneider was easily bored and tended towards luxury and the trappings of wealth -- even if he despised the wealthy elite. One learned not to take all of Schneider's opinions at face value.

They were on the road leading to the castle when the first arrow hurtled down from the rooftops.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath60.htm



	60. chapter 60

aftermath60

Chapter Sixty

No warning. Nothing but the sounds of the city stretching its limbs in preparation for a new day. Then Schneider jerked in the saddle. He didn't even cry out. Just toppled backwards with enough force to send him over the rump of his horse with the short fletched bolt of an arrow protruding from his left eye. Kall's horse shied before he even hit the ground and the bolt that would have taken him through the heart lodged just under it, slamming breath from his body. Yoko was screaming. Schneider's horse bucked into his. Another bolt hit him in the side and this time he saw the movement of a figure on the rooftop to his left.

Kiro was screaming at his men. Kall didn't hear what orders. He ignored the cries and the pain, and looked down once at Schneider, who wasn't moving, blood staining the left side of his face and his hair. Yoko and Arshes were scrambling towards him.

Movement on the rooftop again and he cried out furious words to a spell. The facade of the building exploded, sending shards of stone flying into the street. People screamed as they were bombarded with shards. The building seemed to sag in on itself. He was too full of incipient rage to care for the damage or the innocent lives spent. He could not at the moment think of anything other than finding and destroying the assassin who had dared attack them.

He took to the air, cloak billowing around him like dark, unfurling wings. Saw the collapsed roof of the building, and in the ally below, a figure stumbling away, frantically running as if the hounds of hell were on its heels. They might as well have been. It would have been a kinder fate. He spat a word and extended a hand. A wall of sharp edged ice reared up blocking the far end of the alley. The fleeing man cried out and veered sharply to the side, hurtling his weight against a door. It burst under the assault and the assassin escaped inside. There were startled screams from within, which was the only thing that made Kall-Su hesitate in blasting a second building to oblivion. He hovered for a moment, gauging that the man would flee out the opposite door to the next street. The front door of the building slammed open and a man stumbled out, shouldering his way though the morning crowd. People cried out angrily at the rough treatment. In the midst of so many people firing a spell down at his quarry would take more lives than that one. Almost -- almost it would be worth it. Schneider hadn't moved when he'd hit the ground. An arrow into the brain. Fatal for a normal man. Fatal for most abnormal ones. Schneider was beyond that -- but still ---

The assassin cut through another building and out onto the next crowded street. The market street, where people were already crowded so thick it was hard to follow the man's progress. He might loose him in that crowd. The man just might melt away into the anonymity of a busy trading day. That could not happen. Would not happen.

Kall-Su saw the brown clad shoulders, the long, unkempt hair and beard bobbing amongst a dozen other people. There was a clear space ahead, where a wagon sat in the midst of being unloaded. The street exploded with ice. It fountained up, engulfing the wagon, and snaking along the street to thrust upwards, forming a haphazard barricade. People were hurt. Slammed backwards at the sudden growth, or grazed by sharp stalagmites of ice. But it wasn't the type of ice that would engulf a living body. He was not so careless in his rage now to slaughter the people of his city. Panic swept the crowd. Screams of terror at the sudden apparition spread down the street. People stumbled over each other in their attempts to get away from the area. Kall-Su touched down in the middle of the street. He put up enough of a shield to keep from being knocked down and swept away with the frenzied migration of people. He knew where his prey was. Running away from the barricade along with everyone else. The man had a short cross bow in his hand. There was a bolt loaded. His attention was fixed behind him, towards the ice wall, as if he expected pursuit from that direction. He did not notice that it was before him until he was almost upon Kall-Su. Then his eyes widened and he whirled, fighting his way past the remnants of scattering people.

One foot froze to the ground. The ice crawled up his calf and stopped at his knee. He screamed in more panic than pain. The leg would be beyond pain, numbed by the cold. He twisted to glare in rage at Kall-Su. Lifted the cross bow and fired. The bolt shattered harmlessly against Kall's shield. An inarticulate cry of anger escaped the man's lips. His face was lined and scared from years of hard living and harsh weather. His clothing a patchwork of leather and furs. Not a man of this city. A man of the mountains. A bandit seeking vengeance.

"You will die!! Just like the dark wizard!!" The bandit cried, spittle flying from his lips. The frozen leg shattered. The man's eyes went wide and he teetered on one leg, before he crashed to the ground, screaming, clutching at the jagged edge of his knee. Strangled gasps went up from the people cowering along the side of the street. They hid in booths and tents, staring out with wide, stunned eyes.

Kall-Su ignored them, eyes narrowed, fixed unerringly on his prey. The man was trying to pull another bolt from a pouch at his side. The fingers of that hand stiffened and froze, shattering one by one. The blight continued up his arm, until that too cracked and shattered between shoulder and elbow. Piece by piece he fell apart. His screams were nothing but shock and pain filled terror now. Blood pooled on the street around him, pumping the life from his body. But not as fast as Kall-Su wrenched it from him. It would not do for the man to die on his own before Kall had the chance to finish it.

It did not occur to him, until there were nothing but shards of frozen flesh on the street that this man might have told him where his compatriots were. That the bolts that had taken Schneider and himself had been too close together to have been fired from a single archer.

He heard his name whispered from the people on the street. Slowly turned his head and saw a collected visage of fear on the faces. Justified fear. He left the remnants of the archer on the street and rose into the sky.

Yoko couldn't think. Couldn't formulate coherent thought to fight away the panic, so reflex action took over. Rushie was bleeding all over her. So much blood that it soaked her tunic and slicked her hands. The brown feathers of the bolt's fletching were spattered with it. She could not stand to look at it. A riderless horse shied into her, throwing her off balance. People were still screaming in the street in the aftermath of the explosion that had taken out the building across the street.

Rushie wasn't moving. She couldn't think.

"Yoko!! Yoko!!" Arshes Nei shoved roughly at her shoulder, forcing her attention away from the ghastly wound. She blinked up, moon eyed and terrified.

"We've got to get the bolt out. He can't begin to heal himself with it there."

She stared, dumbstruck that he could heal an arrow through his head. But, goddess, he'd come back from back from worse. Though if Arshes was so certain, why did she look so pale and frightened?

"Hold his head." The half elf commanded, wrapping her fingers around the four inches of shaft that protruded from his eye socket. Reflex took over. Yoko drew a breath and held his head firmly between her hands, forcing herself not to look away as Arshes tensed, then yanked the bolt out. Blood spurted with it and what looked nauseatingly like flecks of brain. They'd done more harm than good with that, the barbed end of the bolt having ripped already torn flesh on its path out. Yoko sobbed and leaned over him, concentrating all of her healing power on trying to repair damage that was beyond her capacity to deal with. He wasn't breathing. She could not sense the beat of his heart. She felt like her own was about to explode from the sheer ache that trembled within it.

"Help me get him to the castle." Arshes was yelling. Yoko realized she wasn't talking to her, but to the few remaining guards that mulled nervously about them. The rest were gone. Gara was gone. Kall-Su had disappeared.

Two of the men bent to lift Rushie between them. Yoko rose with them, her hands still on him, infusing every bit of healing force she could muster into his body. Arshes paced on the other side. They got inside the gates and half way across the yard, before heat began to radiate from Rushie. It went from an onrush of warmth to a sudden and violent wash of energy that blew them all backwards. Yoko tumbled to a halt, throwing her arms up to shield her face from light and blaring torridity. She could barely see him in the midst of the blare, his body arched and rigid where the guardsmen had lost their hold on him. If she had felt nothing from him before, it welled forth now. Mindless, crackling power that sent out errant little fingers to strike cobblestone, the trough by the gates, a discarded metal helm, the roof of the guardhouse by the gates. Servants that had come out into the yard to see what the commotion was cried out and ran for cover. Guards tried to be more valiant, but had little choice as the flares of energy grew worse. Yoko erected a shield. Ground her teeth and crouched behind it when what she really wanted to do was get closer enough to Rushie.

A horse was hit by a strike of white hot energy and crashed down, screaming and thrashing. The smell of burnt flesh permeated the yard. Goddess. Something had to be done. She rose, still maintaining her shield and circled him to join Arshes who crouched ten feet away from him on the other side. The half elf's shields were by far more powerful and Yoko let her own down as she stepped within the boundaries of Arshes' protection.

"He's healing himself?" Yoko was not completely certain that was a factual statement.

"Something is." Arshes agreed.

"Is there anything we can do to -- make it less violent?"

Arshes looked at her grimly. "I don't know. I can't recall him ever having an arrow through the brain before. I would imagine its rather disconcerting."

Someone cried out in pain, clipped by a stray bolt. Yoko winced. "Can you shield me if I try to get closer?"

"Probably." Arshes admitted. "I'd rather let him deal with it on his own."

"Well I would too, if it weren't so damned destructive. Just help me, please."

The half elf shrugged and stepped forward. Through the heat and the energy until Yoko could get her hands -- albeit flesh separated by Arshes shielding -- on him. She tried to slip the healing fingers of her own magic through the power enveloping him, but her magic was not strong enough to pierce it. So she wrapped her arms around his rigid torso and pleaded for him to wake up.

"Its not working." Arshes pulled at her shoulder, looking a little strained now at protecting them both. "Come away and let it run its course."

Then without warning it ceased. Just evaporated like water in the desert and he went limp in her arms. She frantically pushed his hair back to see the wound. Blood still covered his face, but his lid was whole under the gore.

"Come on, help us with him." Arshes cried to the hesitant guards. She and Yoko had him almost up between them when the men came to lend their strength and get him up the steps and inside the hall. He came awake when they were debating on getting him upstairs. Just let out an inarticulate cry and began thrashing. He caught Yoko on the side of the face with a fist and the guards dared not try and restrain him, so Arshes threw herself atop him and did her best to bare him to the floor. It wasn't hard. There was nothing quite sane in his eyes. The one was bloodshot and dilated. Power was building. Defensive, reflexive power to banish what his disorientated mind could not process. Which at the moment, considering they'd just ripped an arrow out of his head along with bits and pieces of his brain, was probably everything. He could take this castle down if he was allowed to lash out unchecked.

"Darshe. Darshe. Its me." Arshes was crying, trying to keep her grip on him. Yoko struggled to her knees, and crawled over. Saw Keitlan and a group of her girls gathering about.

"Get out." She cried. "Go outside where its safe." As if it were safe outside where assassins lurked in the shadows. She pressed herself against his arm, adding her weight and her voice to Arshes.

Keitlan wasn't paying heed to her advice, although a few of the girls had run outside. Most stayed stubbornly to the hall. She saw Lily and Setha behind the housemistress, all of them wide eyed and concerned. Stupid not to run with a wounded and confused sorcerer in their midst.

"Stop it, Rushie!!" she screamed, sounding a bit hysterical herself. "Stop it!!" She drew back her fist and hit him, startling Arshes to no ends. The half elf looked up at her in shock. Her knuckles hurt from the blow. She hit him again.

"What are you doing?" Arshes yelled at her.

"Trying to get through his thick skull." She yelled back, nose to nose with the other woman.

"Didn't that arrow do the job for you?"

"What? Would you have him destroy this castle?"

"I wouldn't hit him when he was wounded."

"Hah. Maybe that was your mistake. If you had a little backbone he'd have never run all over you in the first place."

Arshes gasped in outrage. Tears streaked both their faces. Somewhere along the way he'd stopped struggling against them. Yoko felt his fingers grasp her waist.

"God -- stop yelling." He muttered.

"Oh, Rushie." She cried, wrapping her arms about him, pressing her face to his, regardless of blood. Arshes pushed back, anger fading to be replaced by uncertainty. He caught her wrist before she could retreat and met her eyes over Yoko's head.

"Its okay. I forgive you."

Stupid man, Yoko thought. As if he had anything to forgive, but it was okay, because Arshes let out a little whimper and threw herself against his other side and Yoko shifted away this once to let him wrap his arms about her, because this was something they both needed to mend.

The courtyard was in a shambles. A wagon near the wall was in flames. There was the smoking carcass of a horse. The guard tower had a chunk out of the side of it. Guards ran here and there, manning the walls and delving into the city. Servants clustered outside the main doors, talking fearfully among themselves. The lot of them turned and stared with wide, bewildered eyes when Kall-Su sat down in the yard. They scattered to make a path for him up the stairs. The doors were flung wide. He saw Arshes and Yoko kneeling on the floor beside Schneider and had a moment's fear of the worst before he moved, pushing himself up to a sitting position. Yoko moved to help him and he shook off her hands. He saw Kall before the others did. His face was bloody and terrible.

"Did you get the son of a bitch?"

Kall took a breath and step forward. "Yes. One of them."

"Our missing bandits?"

"Yes." Another step. He tasted copper in his mouth and staggered a little to one side.

"Goddess." Yoko cried. "You're wounded, too."

He'd forgotten about the bolts embedded in his body. He'd been too focused on the anger. He looked down and saw the stubby fletch of one bolt protruding from his ribs and another just above his hip. He felt faint at the sight of them. His thinking went fuzzy for a moment and one knee collapsed out from under him. He went down to hands and knees at Schneider's feet, then pitched to his side when Yoko put her hands on him, trying to ascertain where the bolts were. Schneider leaned over him, a grim, humorless smile on his lips.

"Well, wasn't this a fucking wonderful day?" Then he moved his hand down Kall's shoulder and laid it next to the bolt. "They've got to come out."

"Fine. Do it."

Schneider didn't hesitate. Just grasped the shaft and jerked it out. It hurt like hell. Kall-Su almost didn't feel the second one ripped from his body. Just shut his eyes and pressed his face against Schneider's outflung leg and let somebody wash his body with healing magic. Fates knew his own healing reflexes were unpredictable enough unless life was on the line.

"I'm going to help them search the other archer down." Arshes Nei's voice, fading as she moved away.

The hurt abated. Breathing he had not even realized was difficult eased. He sighed and opened his eyes. Yoko helped him sit up. He was still a little sore, the afterimages of wounds that were no longer there. Schneider's doing then, because Yoko's healing was not so all encompassing. Servants were filling the hall, guards were creeping in from the yard to make sure matters were in hand. He felt foolish sitting on the floor between Schneider's sprawled legs with Yoko hovering over the both of them. He could not quite manage to make himself stand up. Schneider seemed comfortable enough.

"Did you find out anything from the assassin?" Yoko asked hesitantly. He stared at her, then away. Yes, he knew the man could scream to the last. He knew the people of Sta-Veron would never forget that casual display of power. That brutal execution in the middle of market street. The terror in their eyes had been as exacting as that in the eyes of his victim.

"My Lord?" Keitlan's voice intruded. "Let us get the both of you off the floor and to your chambers." He looked up at her and caught sight of the pale face of Lily behind her. Wide, worried eyes under the fall of hair. And a hint of horror. For a brief moment her eyes met his, locked there as if some force held their gaze, then she broke free of it and melted into the ring of servants.

He pressed his lips together angrily, rising without anyone's aid. The feel of cooling blood on his tunic and down his pants leg was clammy and repulsive.

"Was anyone else hit?" He asked, wanting no innocent lives taken because he had been careless enough not to tell Kiro about the bandits and their number on the road in the first place.

"No, milord." One of the guardsmen said. "Only the two of you."

The wizard that had killed Helo Vran's first brother and the one that had taken his second. At least the bandits were careful in their targets. For now. One hoped Kiro and Gara had tracked down the other archer.

The bandit archer did not even know he was being followed. Gara had picked up his trail four blocks from the scene of the attack. Had slipped from shadow to shadow in the wake of the grizzled, grinning assassin. The man thought he had escaped. He thought he had been successful in his mission. He might have been for all Gara knew. Schneider was down and Kall-Su had taken hits, Gara had not wasted time hanging around to find out the end results of that. Kall, he figured was all right, from the burst of magic that had leveled the building the second archer had used as his vantage.

Two archers, one of either side of the road. Gara had pin pointed them almost the second the first arrow had hit. Seen the one disappear in the wreckage of the building and the other slip away in the confusion. Kiro and his men were like dogs on the hunt, rushing through the streets with no stealth or anonymity. Easy to hear coming. Easy to hid from if one were adept at concealment. A mountain bandit would be. But not from a master of the arts.

Gara hoped the man would lead him to the rest of the bandits that had managed to stay behind when their party was ousted. But he entered a tavern after ditching the cross bow in an alley and planted himself at a table by himself, seemingly content to sit and drink the morning away. No one came to join him. Not stupid these men. Not willing to foolishly endanger themselves by meeting up after so brazen an attempt at the life of this city's lord. Damned smart to take out Schneider first. A simple, mundane and entirely efficient way of doing it. If it worked, Gara would be surprised. Schneider had the tendency to snap back from atrocious things perpetrated upon his body.

So a smart bandit wouldn't make a mistake and lead Gara to his compatriots and Gara hadn't the desire to wait all day in the hopes the man would willingly make a mistake. He walked into the bar from the front door. Only a few patrons were here so early in the morning. It was too far away from the palace for word of the assassination attempt to have stirred the men to speculative conversation. No one looked at him. The bandit didn't even look up from his mug of ale. He leaned a hand on the table beside the archer and said softly.

"Good shot with Schneider, but you fucked up royally with Kall-Su."

The man didn't even look back at him. Just grabbed for a long knife in his boot and swung about with it. Gara caught the wrist, twisted it cruelly and slammed it down upon the edge of the table. Bones cracked. The knife left nerveless fingers. He flung the man around and slammed an elbow into his jaw. The other patrons had risen from their tables, startled at the sudden flare of violence in their midst. The bandit was heavy, but slow, more adept at slaughter townsfolk and killing from a distance than combating a well trained warrior. Gara grabbed a handful of greasy hair and smashed the man's face into the table top. That took the fight out of him, enough for Gara to man handle him up and towards the door. The other patrons didn't say a word, just stared in shock as he left.

He shoved the bandit into the adjoining alley, kicked him to the ground into a pile of empty crates. The man glared balefully up at him, eyes darting about the dingy alley, looking for anything that would give him an advantage.

"Easy or hard?" Gara asked, looming over him.

"Fuck you, running dog."

"No, no, no. That's not how it works." His foot shot out, caught the man's knee and shattered it. The bandit howled like the dog he'd called Gara, clutching the injured leg. "How it works is you tell me where the rest of your men are and I see to it that you die quickly and painlessly. Maybe even with a little bit of honor."

"My only honor is thwarting you." Spittle flew from the bandit's lips, hitting Gara's pants leg. He looked down in distaste.

"Wrong again. Hard it is, I guess."

When he'd finished, the bandit had lost all pretense of stubborn vindictiveness. Gara thought he had been truthful in the frantic babbling that had spewed from his bloodied lips. He wiped the blade of the Murasume clean as he walked from the alley, marking it to send Kiro's men back to retrieve the body. Two more in the city, waiting for the chance to commit mischief. They would not get it.

He was walking down the street when Arshes Nei came down from the sky at him, her face filled with grim intent. The look worried him.

He asked before she could venture the information. "Schneider?"

"Alive. Did you find him?"

"I did. He was kind enough to tell me where his friends are staying. Would you care to make a visit?"

She nodded once, silently, never one for a witty rejoinder. They walked towards the outer eastern rim of the city. A poor section of town. As close to slums as Sta-Veron got, with shanty houses built close together and narrow streets that were in need of repair. People were beginning to become aware that something was not quite right within the walls of the city. The guards were out in force and whispers were beginning to spread. Gara heard a boy, out of breath from running, tell a group of loitering men that the Ice Lord had murdered a man in the middle of market. There was no mention of bandits or assassins. He frowned and grabbed that same boys arm, asking.

"Where is Sholaki the Bookmaker's shop?" The boy thrust his jaw out belligerently, angry at the rough treatment, then his eyes took in Arshes Nei behind Gara, her long, sharp ears and the pommels of the greatswords they both wore at their backs. He pointed up the street and stuttered out directions. Gara nodded, then bent his head to suggest.

"Don't spread rumors, boy."

The bookmaker had rooms above his shop that he let out. The bookmaker supposedly had black-market dealings with bandits to the north. Shelter and weapons had to be supplied by someone within the limits of the city, since the bandits had been stripped of their own steel at the gates. Gara would have preferred to wait and watch and see who came and who went from the premises, to get a feel for his prey, but Arshes was not so patient or so reserved in her thirst for vengeance. He started veering off towards the other side of the street with every intention of sitting up surveillance from the shadows, and she split from him and stalked towards the shop of the bookmaker.

Gara gaped and swore and trotted to catch up with her. "If we barge in and they're not here, then we've lost any chance of finding them." He advised her. She gave him the arched brow look of a sorceress who had never learned the meaning of the word caution, much less circumspection.

"Fine." He said and kicked in the door before stepping back and ushering her in. It slammed against the wall with a rattling of thin, haphazardly attached panels. A pale, balding man looked up from a table inside. The walls were lined with paper marks, there were cages along the floor that held a variety of game birds used for fighting. A muscular dog on a chain growled in a corner. The place stank like the pits of hell from poultry, canine and human excrement.

"What's with the door?" the man demanded, rising from the table where he had bookwork and marks scattered. Arshes drew her sword and strode forward, the blade under the flabby chin before the man had the chance to backpedaled away.

"Where are they?"

"What -- who are you? I'll have the city guard after you for this."

"Where are they, you vermin?" she repeated the question with slow, deliberate words.

"Personally, I'd answer the lady." Gara suggested amicably, content to play the good guy to her villain. A little streak of energy radiated the length of her sword. The bookmaker's eyes widened in fear.

"Wh--who?"

"The northern bandits that you give shelter to? The ones who will die because of the monstrous affront they have made this day." she hissed.

The man's eyes widened. Oh, he knew. Gara could see it in his face. But the fear in his eyes was at more than the arcane sword under his chin. This was a man in the midst of a crisis. There was the slight creak of floor boards above. A little curl of dust fell down from the ceiling. Gara glanced up and smiled. He drew the Murasume and laid it across his shoulder.

"I think I'll take a look upstairs. You don't mind, do you? Glad to hear it."

He was past the table and up the narrow stairs at the back of the room. He heard Arshes push the bookmaker against the table and move to follow him. Upstairs was one big loft. Bare floors with a few cots against the walls and crates and boxes taking up the rest of the space. There was one window and a man was in the midst of crawling out it.

"No." Arshes cried from behind him and a bolt lanced out of her outflung fingers and caught the fleeing man square in the back. It singed the hair on Gara's arm it passed so close. The man let out an aborted cry and toppled out of the window in a much quicker than he had probably planned. Another man stood against the wall, very still, very intent. His hands were pressed together, his lips moving in the silent words of a chant. Not like any of the other bandits Gara had seen. His skin was leathery and brown. His face broad and flat, forehead sloping sharply backwards into lank, inky black hair. His eyes were dead as night. So black even pupils could not be discerned. He looked --- uncivilized. That was the closest Gara could come to describing him. He made the bandits seem absolutely domesticated. There were tattoos on his cheeks and forehead. Rune signs that slipped up the arms of his sleeves and peeked out from the backs of his hands. A nomad. He couldn't say how he knew it, but he did. This was one of the elusive nomads that everyone was so spooked about, nestled within the backstreets of Kall-Su's city. And he was in the midst of casting a spell.

The air hummed around them, and rather suddenly the floor turned rubbery beneath their feet. Or their legs went weak, one or the other. Arshes let out a startled, angry squawk and dropped to one knee. Gara cursed and staggered against a crate, flinging out the Murasume and calling forth a blaze of power. Force rippled towards the nomad. The man held up both hands and the runes on his face seemed to glow. The energy of Gara's strike forked around him, blasting sections from the wall on both sides.

"Goddamnit!!" Gara cried. The nomad put his fingers together again and the runes on his hands pulsed. Of a sudden the floor was crawling with blue, ridge backed snakes. Serpent hisses filled the air. Arshes screamed and rocketed right off the floor, launching a bolt attack at the nomad shaman. Gara sliced around his legs at the serpents, having no notion whether the things were real or illusion and having no desire to be bitten either way. Magic snakes could kill as effectively as real ones.

"Gep Vedor!!" Arshes cried and Gara almost called out for her to stop, having no desire to be so close to ground zero of a lightening ball spell. It was too late anyway. It formed about three feet before her and barreled down onto the nomad, who frantically waved his hands to try and block it. He almost did, but the building around him was not so resilient and crumbled. The ceiling collapsed and the floor gave way. The nomad was caught in the slide and Gara found himself helplessly sliding afterwards, amidst crates, and squirming snakes. Arshes caught him under the armpits, heaving him up, protecting him with her shield as chunks of roof crashed down. She swept them down to the street, intent on finding the nomad and finishing this little duel. But the fall had done it for her. He lay sprawled under a section of wall, neck twisted at an unnatural angle, black eyes wide in death. The bandit that had tried to escape lay a few feet from him, charred from her initial lightening strike.

"Well." Gara said, eyeing the debris warily for signs of snakes. They seemed to have disappeared. "That was to the point."

People were rushing towards the disturbance. The bookmaker was crawling out from under the sagging frame of his door, moaning and bleeding. He had sheltered them. At least Kiro might question him and discover something. It was better than nothing.

"Was that a nomad?" Arshes asked.

"That's my guess."

"They have magic. And not a flavor I'm familiar with."

"Me either. What would life be without these little inconveniences to make it interesting?" He said cheerfully.

She looked at him deadpan, her ears twitching. Not particularly happy.

"Oh, well." He shrugged, sliding the Murasume back into its sheath. "Look at it this way. Not a whole hell of a lot else can happen to top today's list of calamities and disasters."

She frowned. She didn't look like she believed him.

The old man was stooped and bent, his large hands veined and splotched with age. He might have been sixty. It was hard to tell from the planes of his face. A strong face once, but now twisted and ravaged by the stress of time or harsh living. His hair was gray streaked brown and tied at the nape of his neck in a tail. But his eyes were sharp and intelligent.

His eyes frightened the merchant who stopped his caravan at the behest of the lone traveler. What harm was an old man alone, traveling along the western trade route towards the north? None the merchant thought, until he saw those intense eyes. Then he wondered if he should not have just passed by when the man waved them down. But the old traveler had gold and plenty of it and asked only for a place in the caravan.

_You travel to the north to trade your goods, do you not?_ The old man had asked.

_Yes. To the capital itself. Sta-Veron. The trade is good this time of year, even with the troubles between north and south. _

The old man's eyes had glittered. The forests of the western mountains were an infinite backdrop beyond the road. The merchant wondered where the old man had come from? What city was close enough for such a man to have walked from? Keladedra sat fifty leagues to the south on the other side of the mountains, but that was the closest city to this desolate section of road. The old man might have hailed from there, with all the gold he carried.

_Why are you walking alone? _

_Because God no longer walks with me._ The old man had laughed at that. A mad, frightening laughter that almost made the merchant forget about gold. But greed won out. Greed and something else, something that tickled at the back of his mind and made him feel pity for a lone traveler. That made him open his heart and offer the protection of his caravan to the old man.

_What do you seek in Sta-Veron?_ The merchant asked, when the traveler was settled in the wagon beside him. The intense eyes locked on his. Even with the haggard lines, his face was mesmerizing. There was something alluring and enticing about him. A man that had a power to his voice and the very aura of his presence.

_Retribution._ He said and the merchant hardly understood that. But he forgot it had ever been said a moment later, his eyes glazed, his mind blank. Then he collected himself and thoughts of trade and profits filled his mind. There was a goodly distance to cover before they crossed the thawed passes that led to the north. If a man wasn't careful, the journey might not prove profitable.

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   [1]: aftermath61.htm



	61. Chapter 61

aftermath61

Chapter Sixty-one

The not to distant scent of magic permeated the eather. Kall-Su sensed it. Schneider did and they hesitated on the stair. A quick burst and another. Nothing tremendously powerful. Nothing to make the city shake or the skies darken. Schneider shrugged it away.

"Arshes doing some damage." He surmised and did not give it more interest than that, Yoko urging him from behind to continue up the stairs. Kall couldn't make himself retreat, despite the very great desire to rid himself of the bloody clothing. He let them go back up and went back towards the courtyard, through the group of servants that Keitlan was chasing back to their duties with sharp words and waving hands. She cast him a sidelong, worried look, but did not dare to try and implement her tendencies towards dictatorship with him.

He walked out of the doors and into the confusion of the courtyard. Men cast wary stares his way. There was a sense of uncertainty mixed with the purpose in this yard. A clamor at the gates and guards clustered there, containing some disturbance. The hoarse screaming of a man, the unsettling murmur of a small crowd. He motioned to a guard and the man ran up to him, out of breath and grim-eyed.

"What is this at the gates?"

The man shook his head almost reluctantly. "My lord --- the merchant who owned the shop down the street -- there's a crowd." The man hesitated.

"The building that was destroyed?" His memory of actually destroying it was vague, he'd been so blinded by anger. The merchants were angry about the building. He shook his head, dismissing it. "Tell him there will be recompense."

"My Lord. There were folk inside. His wife and daughter were killed when the roof fell in. Its not recompense that has them at the gates -- its grief."

He stared at the gates, stricken, breath gone shallow and fast. More innocents to grace the field of dead that mocked him from that other place. And these from the ranks of the people he had chosen to protect. More blood on his hands. Angelo was right. He could not escape the nature of his existence. Two more anchors to pull his soul down to hell.

"Let him in." He said softly and the man blinked, surprised. Stood a moment more then started to run towards the gates, when Kall-Su started walking that way himself. They opened the lesser, man-sized gate and the guards kept the rest of the small crowd of people back while they let one, ravaged faced man in. He saw Kall-Su in the midst of the guardsmen and stumbled towards him. Guards made to stop his approach, but stopped when Kall held up a hand. The man stopped a few feet distant, tears running down his face and cried.

"They're dead. Maggie and little Tryn. And not even by our enemies!! You did it. You killed them. You were supposed to protect us."

"I'm sorry. It was not meant to happen ---"

"You're sorry? Sorry?" The merchant screamed. "What good does your sorry do me? Will your black sorcery bring back my little girl?" He spat. It hit Kall-Su's tunic, dripped there with all the blood. He flinched, aghast at the hate in the eyes of such a powerless, mundane little man. The hate and the grief that allowed such a man to make an affrontage to a sorcerer that could destroy him out of hand. He had not seen hate directed at him from the people of this city since he had taken it so many years past, and then he hadn't cared. The things that mattered now had been shadows then.

"You should have never come back." The bereaved merchant cried. The guards had had enough. They caught hold of the man, gently but firmly and forced him back towards the gates. Kall stared, hollow eyed until the gate was closed and all he could hear was the murmur from outside. Someone said something to him, but he didn't catch it, suddenly overwhelmingly aware of the blood that lay upon him like a shroud. He rubbed his hand down the front of his tunic and it came away smeared with it. He stared at it, horrified. Tried to wipe it off on his cloak, but it left streaks. His blood. But it might as well have been the blood of innocents that he'd spilled. Thoughtless, thoughtless thing to do. To cast such a spell in the heart of his city.

Keitlan was hovering at the door when he went back into the castle. Whether she had heard what had been said or not, he didn't know or care. Numbly he said to her.

"The man whose family -- was lost -- see that he gets -- adequate ---" He blinked, train of thought lost momentarily. "-- give him whatever he wants.

"My lord." She was white faced and distressed. He left her at the doors, still wiping his hand uselessly with the edge of his cloak. The blood was persistent. It would not come off. He'd wanted the blood of the bandit so bad the chase had consumed him. But the satisfaction of killing that man did not stick so firmly in his mind as the faces of the people that had watched it. God, god, god, when had it ever mattered? He could not find that elusive disregard anymore. It was lost with the part of him Ansasla had destroyed. That Angelo had destroyed. For the first time in weeks he could not find his focus. The blood interfered, it brought back images of other blood shed, which he could not easily deal with.

He stopped at the half-open door to Schneider's room and stood there, listening to Yoko recounting how frightened she had been and Schneider's grunted reply that he hadn't felt a thing then, but his head hurt like hell now. She walked past the door with discarded clothing in her hands and saw him. Stopped and half smiled at first, then the smile faded and she moved towards the door, opening it.

"Kall? Are you okay?" She peered up at him, her fine brows drawn. Schneider sat propped against a great pile of pillows at the foot of his bed, divested of his own blood drenched clothing and wearing loose silken trousers. His hair was wet and clean of blood, though his eye was still deeply bloodshot.

Kall-Su held up his hand helplessly. "I have blood on my hands. I can't get it off."

"Well go change clothes, idiot." Schneider snapped.

As if it were that easy. He stared at his hand while they stared at him. "I killed a child and her mother in that building --- murdered them and the spell didn't even get the assassin."

"What building?"

"Oh, goddess, Kall."

"How do I get rid of that? There are so many innocent dead I can't see the end of them sometimes." He looked away. Felt wetness on his cheek and wondered if it were the crimson red of blood. It ought to be.

Yoko reached towards him and he shied away from her, wild-eyed. Held up a hand to wave her sympathy away. Tried to regain composure while she was staring at him, stricken and Schneider was glaring from behind her.

"Don't you dare go mental on me again." Schneider hissed. Schneider was uneasy support at the best of times. He was irritated and ill tempered from the ache in his head. He did not -- could not understand. Kall didn't know if he did. He was acutely aware of the possibility that Schneider was right and that he was flirting with the boundaries of that place he had been in the days following his return here. It was not a good place. He dreamt about it enough not to wish it upon himself during waking hours. But it was so very hard to push away once its nightmarish tentacles wrapped around him.

He forced his eyes to go cold. As cold as he could with wetness spiking his lashes and inclined his head. "Don't worry." He replied to Schneider's blunt command. He spun and stalked down the hall, Yoko peering out the door behind him. Don't rub at the blood while they could see him. He balled his hand into a fist and held it rigidly at his side until he was through the portal to his chambers and safely behind closed doors. He shed the ruined clothing and tried to rinse away the residue of blood on his skin with the basin of clean water the maids always left, morning and evening. He was not completely certain he'd cleaned it all away. It was not within his capacity to convince himself of his immaculateness. Guilt was too familiar a companion.

_You're only a sinner if you believe in the sin. There's nothing that can't be repaired, or forgiven or changed. _ The girl's words. She was naive, but she didn't condemn him, even though he occasionally saw fear in her eyes. He still wasn't sure it was fear of him or something else. He wondered what she would say when she heard of the innocents that had lived right outside these castle walls that had died by his hand.

Lily slipped out the kitchen gates in the confusion. There were twice the normal amount of guards there, but they let her pass, used to the sight of her by now and more interested in the furor that had taken up residence within and without the castle walls this morning. She had to leave, duties or not. If she stayed in the castle she would go mad. She had to banish the memory his blood and those terrible bolts piercing his body. The other wizard had healed him, she'd heard that while she was hiding in the kitchen courtyard, but being so close and not being able to see for herself -- it made her head spin. So she had to flee.

The city was a familiar maze to her now. But today it was crowded with excitement and fear and resentment. She heard the rumors as she passed. She saw the great, crumbled remains of what had been a two story building. The shop of a glass artisan, she thought. The crowd outside it was wretched. There were covered, still forms under blankets on the rubble littered street. A man crouched over them, howling his misery to the world. Guards mulled about nervously.

She hurried past, white faced and sick. To the tavern her minstrel friends frequented, hoping they would be there. She need not have worried. The tavern was full. Fuller than it might normally have been so early in the day. The room was abuzz with conversation. The words swam together forming one large cacophony of noise. She saw Dell's head through the crowd and worked her way towards him. Allun and Thizura were with him, drinking at the bar, listening intently to the discussions flowing around them. It was the way of the harper, to listen to the gossip and the news and spin it into fables that might be carried from one place to the next.

Thizura saw her fist, fixed her with his dark eyes and nudged Dell with an elbow. Dell turned, mug half lifted to his lips and regarded her with an arched brow, curious look. She blushed under that gauging stare, not certain why she was the recipient of it.

"Lily, what brings you out of the castle so early? Don't you have duties to attend?" Dell asked, making room for her at the bar. Allun jumped off the stood he'd been perched on and offered it to her. She was not much of an ale drinker, but she felt the need for a mug now and signaled the barkeep.

"No one noticed." She explained. "It was crazy there with --- with all that happened."

"Oh, yes. We've heard." Dell said.

"And saw." Thizura added. She looked at him uncertainly. There was a hint of malice in his voice.

"A most amazing display." Dell said. "We were at market when the lord of this city took a man apart piece by piece. How privileged you are to justify such an escort through the night."

She stared, wide-eyed, not fully understanding, but realizing that they had ascertained who had walked her to the tavern that night.

"What are you talking about? What happened in the market?"

They told her and she sat and gripped the mug until her fingers were numb. Finished the ale in a few breathless gulps and sat there shaking. Minstrels were very detailed in their descriptions. But they spoke as if it had been some innocent bystander that Lord Kall-Su had decided to butcher out of hand.

"He was an assassin." She said in defense. "A bandit that tried to kill Kall -- Lord Kall-Su and Lord Schneider. They were both injured. It was just, what he did."

"No, no, no." Dell laughed mirthlessly. "Just is a hanging or a beheading or even a good old knife through the heart. I was there, Lily and what was done to that man was -- just brutal."

"No more so than any of the things done during the wars." She shot back and wished she hadn't said it because Dell got a smug look on his long face and leaned close to remind her.

"Oh and how many of those much more brutal things were perpetrated by your precious Ice Lord? Quite a few, I would imagine. Shall I name a city or two destroyed personally by him?"

"No." She whispered, having heard the same tales he had. But it wasn't the same anymore. She knew that. She had to hold onto that, because one could hardly feel the things one did about a monster and still live with one's self. She did not want to talk with Dell anymore. She wished Crayl were here to temper the conversation.

She rose, ready to abandon them to their own assumptions, but Allun caught her arm and smiled at her encouragingly. "Ignore him. He's high on all the speculation. Play with us this evening. We'll do a duet, you and I. The Moonswan song. You can do the Kaulura dance and take everyone's mind off the tragedies of this morning."

He had such a sadly, sweet smile, he was hard to resist. And they did sing beautifully together. Thizura was jealous, they blended so well. Allun gave Dell as reproachful a look as he was capable and suggested. "We'll go practice now if you've the desire to stay away from the castle."

She bit her lip. Dell sniffed. Thizura glared. She nodded and Allun took her arm and the two of them waded towards the back of the tavern room to the stairs leading up to the rented rooms above.

The one the minstrel's shared was in the loft. Bare floor and blankets, and slanted ceilings forced one to duck near the walls. A cheap room, but large enough for four minstrels. Their instruments were carefully stored. More carefully than clothing gear. Allun picked up his lute and sat by the open loft window. She sat with her back against one of the supports in the center of the room. He did not bring up uncomfortable subjects. They sang the song. Practiced harmonies and experimented with variations. They tried another one. A very old one from the times before. _Blowing in the wind._ She had never sang it herself, for it required layered harmonies and she'd always sang by herself. It was good to be a part of something. It felt right, the essence of the music, the way it made her spirit soar and forget the hurtful things.

When they'd finished, Allun sat staring at her, half a smile on his lips. "There's something about you, when you put your heart into a song. You exude something. Crayl does too. Its powerful."

She looked down, embarrassed. "Its just music."

"Just music? Blasphemy from the lips of a harper. For shame, Lily."

He made her smile.

"You waste your talents away, working as a servant in the castle."

"I know." She sighed.

"Come stay with us. Join us and you don't ever have to be a servant again." _You need never be enslaved again._

"I was a slave. Being a servant is not so bad."

He stared at her. She rubbed her hand self-consciously. She did not want to be a servant. She did not want to stay in that castle where her heart was constantly torn to pieces. Better if she were away. Better that the thin threads that did exist were severed.

"Would it be okay with the others?" she asked uncertainly.

"Crayl suggested it. Dell is too eager, but don't fret, his bark is worse by far than his bite. He is a gentleman at heart. Thizura likes you."

"Even if he is jealous?"

Allun blushed a little. "Even so. He'll get over it. He always does."

She took a trembling breath, felt herself on a precipice that once crossed, could not be regained.

"I'll need to go back and get my things."

What few things she owned could be carried in one arm. She left the drab maid's uniform, which had not truly been hers to begin with on the bed and left in her vivid harper's colors, lute over her shoulder and small bag of belongings under her arm. She would have liked to speak to Yoko, who had been a friend to her, but that lady was not to be found. One suspected she was with her wizard and one did not wish to intrude upon him. She found Keitlan and informed the housemistress of her plans. The woman frowned her distaste and commented how boundless the life of a traveling harper was, but gave Lily a whole week's pay, despite the fact that it was only half over. The woman patted her on the cheek in a moment of affection and told her to be careful of scoundrels and to watch her purse and her person if she insisted on frequenting taverns and inns.

"You're a good girl, and you did my lord a service. Take care, for this is not the safest time to be wondering the city, what with bandit assassins and nomads in our very own city, and I promise to tell Lady Yoko where you've gone -- if she can ever be pried away from that rogue who's bespelled her." This last was muttered under the house mistress's breath. Lily smiled. Looked up the stairs that led to the residential wing and bit her lip.

"Please -- please express my thanks to Lord Kall-Su for his generosity." She could not say more. So she turned and hurried out the doors. She took the main gates this time, the guards letting her out through the portal to the side. She stood outside and looked back once, certain that she would never pass them again. And in a few weeks she would be out of this city when the minstrels left to tour the south and then she could start to forget.

Gara and Arshes were in Kall-Su's study, along with Kiro and a reluctant Schneider. From the look on his face, he wanted to be there about as much as Kall-Su did himself. He sat slouched in a chair, fingertips massaging his temples, eyes shut. One had to recall he'd had an arrow through the eye no less than six hours past and miraculous healing abilities or no, that sort of injury did not vanish without side effects. He was lucky it was nothing more than a headache he could not magic away. He was still in a black mood. He'd glared at Kall when he'd stalked in as if the whole thing were his fault -- which was probably true, when one got right down to it -- then claimed the only other chair in the room besides the one behind the desk and sat there, refusing to comment, while the Gara and Kiro discussed what had happened, how lax city security was, and what they might do to improve it. Arshes stood with her arms crossed by the window, looking impervious and grim, only speaking when Kiro pressed her to explain about the nomad shaman she and Gara had taken out. Nomad magic was earthy and rune oriented. They were, despite their fierce demeanor and nomadic qualities an intensely spiritual people. Which was what made them dangerous. They had no fear of death. No care for the world outside their own existence. It was an amazing thing that a mere bandit chieftain had managed to spur them into a pact to extend their territories. It was amazing that one had taken the trouble to travel to Sta-Veron.

Kiro discussed retaliation and strategy. Kall-Su's attention drifted from the conversation, less interested in troop formation and movements than he was than thinking about the face of that merchant who'd accused him of murder. No one else had. No one else had mentioned it -- at least within his hearing. He would not be held accountable -- just as he had not been held accountable in the past. Who would dare, other than a grief stricken father and husband, to point the finger at him?

He looked at his hands, scrutinizing them for some tell tale sign of blood. Then shook his head to clear it of such madness. Fool. Fool. He'd washed it all clean. He clasped his hands before him and pressed his lips against his knuckles.

"My Lord?"

Kiro was staring down at him, concerned. Kall-Su looked up at the expectant stare, completely lost to the thread of conversation.

"Do whatever you think necessary." He said, an adequate answer for whatever he might have been asked. He trusted Kiro. Schneider opened one eye to look at him. He avoided that stare, rose instead and abandoned them to their talks of assassination and revenge. He had already taken his and he did not at the moment feel the need to track mountain bandits through the wilderness to inflict more. He might feel differently later.

To his rooms, he retreated and sat in the windowseat, staring out over the city beyond the walls until the shadows lengthened and cast the world in shades of purple. Keitlan came in with an armful of folded clothes and asked if he wished his supper in his rooms or if he would take it downstairs. In his rooms most definitely. She put the clothes away. He thought he recognized the tunic from this morning. Washed of blood and mended of slits made by assassin's bolts. He'd rather it had been thrown out. Then he thought of the girl, who worked in the laundry and wondered if she'd had a hand in the cleansing.

"Mistress Keitlan," he said to her as she was bustling out of his rooms. "The girl -- Lily --?" He stopped, not knowing exactly what he wanted to ask of her. Not knowing what he could ask of her without making a fool of himself. Keitlan stood there, waiting, until she realized he had no intention of finishing the question.

"What of her, my Lord? She left the castle today, if that's what you're inquiring about?"

He blinked at her. "Left?"

"Ah, silly girl has the notion to take up the life of a minstrel. Worthless bounders the lot of them, if you ask me. But it's in her blood. I gave her a weeks pay, knowing that she helped you in that place. She was a good girl, if not a bit quiet, so I wish her well."

She had gone. He had seen the horror in her eyes that morning. She had run because of it. He felt betrayed and there was no good reason for it. Lies when she said she wasn't afraid of him. Respect and loyalty were so fickle. The people outside his gates had cried justice, as if he were some marauder instead of their liege lord. Schneider had always refused such a responsibility -- the ruling of a land -- he complained that it was too hard a task to win and keep the allegiance of a people. Easier to just conquer them and give the task to someone else with more patience. He supposed he deserved it. Being abandoned. By her, by the good faith of his people. It was a consistency in his life. One learned to expect after a while to be betrayed when it happened enough. But it never quite stopped hurting.

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   [1]: aftermath62.htm



	62. Chapter 62

afthermath62

Chapter Sixty-two

He did not quite plan to go and find her, only the sense of betrayal drove him beyond perfectly reasonable actions. A day full of too many irrational things forced him beyond clear thinking. He left the castle and the things it represented and went into the night dark city. In plain clothing and cloak, no one was the wiser that he walked among them. No one curbed their tongues in passing rumors or speculation over the events of the day. He had never in all his time sitting as lord over Sta-Veron, prowled the streets of the city. It was not in his nature to mingle with people. It was not precisely, as the rumors went, because he was cold, or thought he was above them, but more from the apprehension that he would find no acceptance among the ranks of common men. He had tasted the bitter brew of being a feared and hated outcast in his youth and fiercely strove to avoid sampling it anew.

There was a goal in it now. So he sought out the place he had taken Lily before, but found it lacking. There was no minstrel vying to be heard over the humm of conversation. He heard his own name mentioned a dozen times in the brief foray he made, looking for her. He tuned out the words that followed, not wanting to hear. He didn't know where to go after that and stood outside where the air was fresh and the noise was less, trying to decide what to do. There were dozens of taverns in the city. Where would she be? Was she even practicing her trade? How much of a fool would he make out of himself over this sense of retribution he felt he was owed?

A boy came out to dump a bucket of dirty water on the stone of the street.

"Boy." Kall-Su beckoned and the lad gave him a surly, quarrelsome look.

"What? I'm busy."

"The girl who sang here. Lily. Do you know where she is?"

"How in hell should I know? Probably with her minstrel cronies at the Crimson Stag."

"And where is that?"

The lad peered at him as if he were the veriest of idiots. "What? You think I give out directions how to get to the competition?" The boy sneered and spun and marched away, bucket bouncing against his skinny leg. One did not lower one's self to arguments on the street with bar boys, even if one was terribly offended by the attitude. But the boy had made a casual wave down the street to the west when he'd mentioned the name of the tavern.

A place to start. The sagacious part of his self had not yet managed to convince the less sensible to give up this mad pursuit. He passed a handful of taverns, none of which boasted the name of Crimson Stag. He shied from asking directions from the men on the street. Shied even more from the patrolling guards who were out in force and would have been more likely to recognize him. If rumors were flying now -- one shivered to think what would follow from this present madness of his, if it were to come to light.

He saw the wooden sign that bore the symbol of a blood red stag eventually. It swung under the awning of a tavern and inn snuggled between a stable and a leathersmith's shop. It was filled to overflowing with patrons. The men spilled out onto the sidewalk. The faint sounds of music could be heard from within. Too many people. Far too many boisterous, drunken folk for him to feel comfortable. Almost it was not worth it, to plunge into that mass of humanity. But that would be a sort of cowardice and he had too much pride to allow himself that. So he slipped in among them, a svelte and lissome intrusion, amid so many less graceful bodies.

There was a great commotion from the crowd at the back of the tavern. A swelling of men that caterwauled and stomped their feet about a clearing at the back. The sound of music, lively and spirited made a tempo that even the blare of conversation could not overcome. It was a battle to get closer and even then he refused to press in amongst the crowd to see fully what intrigued them. He saw enough in the flashes of parting bodies to know the floor had been cleared for a dance. He saw the flash of red skirt and the swirl of dark hair and know that it was her. There was no getting closer, so he retreated to wait it out. She would retire from it eventually.

A waitress came up to him, pressed against his arm and yelled over the din asking if he wanted a drink. His stare drove her away. It could not quite drive away the closeness of the others. He might have accomplished as much with a bit of subtle magic, but he did not trust that it would not be recognized by some too perceptive soul and his charade given away. Anonymity was a precious thing so seldom received. Now doubly precious considering how uncertain he was in this foray, how uncertain he felt about the sentiment of the city towards him. He should not have come. He told himself that for the umpteenth time. He had no right to censure Lily for what she did or did not do, for where she chose to go or who she chose to associate with. Shared experiences did not automatically mean shared loyalties. Almost he convinced himself out of the tavern and back to the safety and the isolation of the castle -- but the music died and the dance stopped.

There was a certain heady power to pleasing a crowd. A certain euphoria that came when she knew she had the attention of a room full of observers, that she held sway over their emotions. That she could make them feel sad with a tragic ballad, or laugh at the whimsical rhyme of a comical song, or even lust when she performed a wild, gypsy dance like the Kaulura and every male eye in the place was glued to her avidly. Heady and intoxicating that power and she reveled in it; the only power she had ever held in all her years as a slave, the power to sway the emotions of her audience.

She bowed low at the finish of the dance, a thin sheen of moisture glittering on her skin, her hair sticking to her face in thin tendrils from the heat of the tavern and the exertion of the dance. A shower of coin hit the floor at her feet. A pittance, really. Nothing but copper and bronze, perhaps a silver or two amidst the bounty, but a great deal from a tavern full of working men. It was a success. Her first real performance with her new troop and they as well as the audience had been pleased with the results. She scooped up a handful of coins. Thizura and Allun were gathering more from the floor. Dell swept her around in one arm, the other holding his lute and laughed in her ear.

"You dance that like you were born a gypsy."

"I was owned by one, does that count?" She retorted, laughing back, giddy from the applause, from the passion of the dance. She felt so good, it seemed as if all the years of slavery could be washed away. Crayl and Thizura had began a melody, lute and flute, that required no words, giving the other's the time to catch their breaths and regain their voices. Someone thrust a mug of ale into her hand. Watered down brew, which meant it was complements of the house. She swallowed it greedily nonetheless, craving replenishment. She pushed sweat dampened hair out of her face and Dell grinned down at her.

"Why don't you do that more often. You hide your face too much."

She might have blushed at that flirtation if the performance had not imbued her with boldness.

"And have everyone flirt with me as outrageously as you do, master Dell?"

He started to answer, but his eyes fixed beyond her and widened. His mouth dropped open and she felt a moment's dread that something had come to ruin this buoyant mood of hers. To ruin this moment of absolute freedom. She almost did not turn, but Dell pushed her into it, grasping her shoulder and urging her around.

And saw him. Amidst a crowd of oblivious men, who were either to drunk or too stone headed to realize what walked among them. She picked him out easily enough, no matter that he wore plain brown cloak and simple gray tunic underneath. The clothes could not disguise the pure aesthetic aura he exuded. Or the underlying current of power he carried with him.

He did not belong in this place. He most assuredly did not and she could not for the life of her immediately imagine why he was. He stared at her, she saw his eyes flicker behind her to Dell, who had his hands still on her shoulders. His face didn't change, but something in those crystal blue eyes of his flickered. With offense maybe. Or hurt.

"By all the gods, what's he doing here?" Dell leaned over her shoulder to hiss in her ear, sounding none to pleased with the fact. And that whispered intimacy did it. Kall-Su whirled and started to weave through the crowd. She shrugged out from under Dell's hand and glared at him.

"Stop doing that!!" she accused, him having twice now driven Kall-Su away from her. She didn't spare him a moment to gape at her in bewildered and none too sincere innocence, but pushed her way through the crowd after Kall-Su. She could not very well call out his name. Not here and most certainly not this particular evening. So she plowed roughly past men half again her size and forgot all pretense of subtly or humility and snatched hold of his cloak and the arm under it to make him stop. He turned stiffly about to fix her with his ice lord stare and she almost blanched and removed her hands from his person, but the boldness of the performance was still upon her. She needed to know why he had come here. She needed to know what had prompted such an uncharacteristic act from him.

"Why are you here?" she forged past the glacial stare to implore.

"I don't know." Stiff reply, but she could still see the hint of hurt in his eyes. He tried to hide it, but it was so clear to her that he was bruised and not quite thinking reasonably, otherwise he would not be here, standing amidst the clamor and sweat of a crowded tavern with her. She thought about all the things people were saying, all the rumors and the accusations that were flying about the town. He had to have heard. How could he have not? And beyond that even, was the weight of those deaths upon his shoulders. She knew very well that guilt was a weakness with him. The Master had used it well enough against him.

"Will you talk with me?" she asked, pleaded, trying to sound calm and rational when her heart was pumping so fast it felt as if would come right up her throat. He stared at her, the coldness threatened by just a little bit of uncertainty. "Please?" she added, pulling gently at his arm.

She felt him give in. A fractional loosening of his muscles as he let her pull him through the crowd, past Dell and Allun, who were staring in unabashed shock, towards the only quiet place she could think of. The loft, a part of which had become hers.

There was a lantern still burning on a peg by the door. It cast the slope ceilinged room in a dim circle of light. He took a few steps into the loft and just stood there. She pressed her back against the door, not knowing what to do now that she had him here.

"Why did you come here?" she repeated softly.

He wouldn't turn to look at her. "You lied to me."

She blinked, dumbfounded. "I did?"

"You said you weren't afraid and yet you ran away."

She caught her breath, some small glimmer of understanding seeping past the turmoil of emotion. He was so determined to believe everyone thought the worst of him. And he was not entirely wrong about her exodus. She had fled from a sort of fear. But it was not what he thought.

"I couldn't live the life of a laundry girl, when one of minstrelsy offered itself." Half truths.

"No." He agreed. "But the blood helped make the decision."

The blood? Who's? She licked her lips, surmising that the ground this conversation was taking was unstable at best. There was a haunted tone to his voice.

"What blood?"

He turned to look at her, holding his hands forward as if to display them. It was not just his voice, but his eyes that were ghostly and miserable. "Theirs. I tried to wash it off, but ---" he faltered, looking away, drawing a tremulous breath. " -- the stain is still there. I wanted to find you -- but you were gone."

"Find me? Why?"

"Because no one else --- I needed -- something --"

Panic. She saw it building, bringing confusion with it. It made her suddenly angry that all those wizardly friends of his were so oblivious as to let him reach this state, for it was no sudden thing. What in hells were they doing that they couldn't see? Were they so wrapped up in their own selves that they couldn't recognize how badly he needed support. Did they expect what the Master had done to just evaporate like it never happened?

"My Lord---"

He balled his hands into fists, squeezed his eyes shut and growled. "I'm not! I don't deserve it."

"Because of today?" She took a tentative step forward, touched his clenched fists. He flinched from her. It was not her, she thought, but himself that he feared. "It was an accident. You didn't know. You'd been shot, for the gods sake. You struck out in response. People will always take up the worst things to gossip about. It's the nature of humanity, but it will pass. They'll find something new next week and forget about it."

"How? Its just one more thing. Do you have any idea how much blood I've spilled. You're right to be afraid. If you're not, you're a fool."

He hated himself so very much. An old, old hate that he did not know how to let go of. _Fool,_ she thought, _this is a trap that won't be easy to get out of._ But she was still heady from the dance, still brazen with her own sense of power. She stepped forward and kissed him. Felt his shock through the tenuous connection, but he did not flinch away. Merely stood there numbly and stared down at her when she broke it. Flushed. Breathing a little hard. If he hadn't she would have felt more the fool and would not have reached up and touched the smooth skin of his face.

"I'm not. I swear." Then she smiled at him, a little gypsy slyness entering her tone. "It's better if you help."

She wrapped her arms around his neck and tried it again. He loosened, she felt his hands almost hesitantly reach around her back. There was an urgent, untrained honesty in his kiss that made her think he had not allowed himself passion enough in the past to be adept at it now. Gods knew that she was. She had been taught all the things a proper, pretty little slave ought to know to please a man. She had never actually wanted to, of her own free will, until now. It was patently unbelievable that it was happening at all.

She pulled back a little, arms still around him, to look at him. To gauge what was in his eyes. She felt vaguely amoral, seducing him into something he might or might not have come here for. She hadn't decided yet whether she was taking advantage of the vulnerability she felt in him, or helping to soothe it. She laid her head against his shoulder and stood there. He seemed content with that.

She didn't know what to call him. Honorariums made it seem as if she were being paid for a service. Not fair to him or her, considering.

"Kall-Su," she said softly, against the material of his cloak. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you I was leaving. I owed you that."

He did not respond. She sighed and shifted to push a little bit away from him. She kept her fingers wrapped in the edge of his cloak. He was so distressingly beautiful and those soulful, tragic eyes just ate into her soul. All the time she'd spent mooning over him in the Place Without Windows and she'd never, ever expected this. But he stymied her, for she was not quite certain what he wanted of her. He was too uncertain himself. So it was left to her to edge around the question clumsily.

"Do you want to ---" she bit her lip, blushing a little. She had certainly never in her life asked a man if he wanted to lie with her. This one was making her work, even if she personally thought he needed it a great deal more than she did.

Then she looked about the loft and realized it was not the most comfortable of places. He was used to much better. She was embarrassed then and lowered her head to let some of her hair slid over her face and cover it.

"What am I thinking? This place is ---"

"Yes."

He drew her back towards him. Gentle hands. Very careful hands. _Okay,_ she thought. _Okay._ Don't think about the trap or the threat to freedom. Hesitate now and there might never be another chance and she wanted him too badly to risk loosing it. The minstrels would not come up here, no matter how disquieted Dell and Allun had looked, they would not pass that door if they had to sleep in the stables tonight. An unspoken courtesy among traveling troupes, who found comfort where and with whomever they could.

So it was hard floor covered by blankets, which neither was of a mind to notice. She was better at the coordination of it than he was, having, she was certain beyond a doubt, more experience by far. Clothes went. He banged his head on the low slanted ceiling. She drew him down to kiss it away. He was the most wonderful thing she'd ever had. And the most dangerous because he was addictive and persuasive without even realizing it.

And afterwards, when they lay, limbs intertwined he reminded her that he was, despite all his other winsome qualities, still a man. "Come back to the castle with me."

She didn't answer. She couldn't. How did she say she'd just escaped those walls and given herself a freedom that she had always dreamed of, but never known? How did she say she did not want to be trapped within walls of any type just yet, without offending him? Gods, she did not want to bruise his feelings. So she avoided the issue by distracting him and used skills she had not practiced the first time, when it had been the pure passion of discovery, to unsure that the answer to that question was the farthest thing from his mind. He was easy enough to manipulate. She might even have felt a little guilty, if she had not enjoyed it so much herself.

But in the back of her mind, she knew he would ask it again. But not until morning. And then she stirred before he did, used to rising early to start her chores and lay propped on an elbow staring at him, wondering what she was going to do. Nothing cold, or powerful, or frightening about him when he slept. He just looked young, which he wasn't, and innocent, which he could also not lay a claim to. A dilemma. A very attractive dilemma, which she had not been prepared to deal with.

Kall-Su woke up with the feeling that he was being watched. Came instantly awake and aware in a place other than his bed. For one brief moment disorientation set in and his mind flashed back to other dark, terrible places. No small bit of reflexive, defensive energy swirled in the eather around him, attracted by his panic, then he saw Lily looking down at him, felt the silky length of her leg touching his and memory flooded back. Pale light crept in from the cracks in the shutters. The morning air had a bite. He blinked up at her. She smiled. One side of her hair was tucked behind an ear, the other fell down around her face, half hiding her features.

"Good morning." She said, and there was just a hint of uncertainty in her voice. And it was. He had whiled the night away here, devoid of any nightmares save the brief waking one. Had come here last night looking for maybe this very thing -- maybe something entirely else that he still had not figured out and ended up on the hard floor of a tavern loft with Lily. Not an unappealing situation, but a curious one. Not one he would have predicted for himself. Not one he completely pretended to understand. He would have found more confidence in it, had she not looked quite so uncertain herself.

He sat up, careful of the low ceiling. He'd already banged his head more than once and stared back at her, trying to gauge what was behind her dark eyes. He was out of his depth in so personal a situation. He did not know how to ask the questions that needed asking. Why was there the hint of distress in her eyes? Did she regret it had happened? He felt a little alarmed at such a thought.

"How old are you?" She asked. Not what he was expecting. He thought about it, and thought she might not like the answer, but she was sure to have heard tales. One could not escape the tales.

"Over a century." Quietly said. She tilted her head, pushing back the other half of hair.

"How much over?"

He calculated, having lost interest in trivial things like birth dates, years ago. "Twenty - three, maybe."

"Oh. I don't know how old I am. No one ever told me when I was born."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I'm not. Is it true? What they say about you? What the Master said about you?"

He drew back. Not wanting, oh god, not wanting to tread on that ground. He did not want to see disgust and fear enter her eyes. Could not bear it.

"Which thing? There are so many."

She sighed. "About your father - - - "

"Being a demon?" he finished bleakly, bitterly. "Probably. I don't know. I never met him."

"Is that why you think you're so tainted? Is that why you were so willing to believe all the terrible things the Master told you?"

He drew breath, offended by that calm spoken attack. She had no idea. No notion what she spoke of. A shield of defensive coldness began to seep over him. Familiar ice that had always faithfully protected him against hurtful emotions. But she leaned forward, all silken skin and limpid dark eyes and pressed her lips against his forehead.

"It doesn't matter. None of it does. I believe in you."

He was shocked. Profoundly shocked. At the touch. At the words. At the expression of utter -- _trust _-- in her eyes. No one had ever looked at him like that before. No one that hadn't had some trace of fear or some hope of gain behind it. It splintered the ice.

"How much -- did you hear?" He could recall only a pittance of it himself. It blurred into one lurid, inescapable nightmare. She invited herself next to him against the wall, dragging the blankets with her.

"Enough. You were a passion of mine. I lurked about in the shadows constantly. He was a madman. You know that, don't you? I've never wished anyone dead before -- but I hope he's buried under that horrible place. I hope he rots in hell."

There was such vehemence in her voice, such poignant hate that he was taken aback. He did not expect it of her, who believed any sin could be redeemable.

"Did he --- hurt you?" It was a hard question to ask, bringing to mind all the ways the Prophet had to destroy a person.

"No. Not like he did you. But, I was always the good slave. I always knew my place. I tried to tell you, remember?"

"Yes. I don't think it would have made a difference. That wasn't what he wanted of me."

She sighed and rested her head against his shoulder. Her weight was nice. It was comfortable and comforting. No had made him feel that way in a very long time. Had she answered his question last night? About coming back with him? He could not recall.

He started to ask her again, but a sharp rapping on the loft door interrupted the peace. "Hello? Hello? Everyone alive in there? We'd like a change of clothes if that's not too much to ask."

Lily laughed, amused.. Kall-Su drew his brows, not quite so. One imagined the offensive, red-haired minstrel behind the tart request. He had managed to acquire a distaste for the man in the brief moments he had seen him.

Lily reached for a handful of discarded clothing, sorted it, tossed him his tunic while she slipped her blouse over her head. She leaned forward and impulsively kissed him while he was staring at it, for the second time this morning thinking how improbable a situation this was. There were so many facets to her that continually amazed him.

"You should probably get back." She suggested. "They'll be worried about you."

As if he were on a curfew. She must have seen his affronted expression, for she tempered the statement.

"After yesterday, everyone is bound to be a little uptight."

"Will you come with me?"

She froze in wrapping the sash of the skirt. He saw it the moment her eyes became shuttered. She looked down to see the knot she was tying, letting her hair fall to cover her eyes. "What would they say? A serving girl? You don't want that kind of talk."

He let out a breath of indignation. A breath of anger. But his anger was always the cold kind.

"If I wish to bring a servant or a slave to my castle, it is mine to do so. If they talk, I assure you they will not do it within my hearing."

She lifted her head, bitten by the cold. "But they'll do it within mine. And you do care what they say, whether you admit it or not. Don't make it a fight, my lord. I'm not a thing to be conquered. And I'm not a slave anymore or a servant. I'm a minstrel. A free minstrel. Grant me that, will you? Let us deal with the rest later."

He didn't want to. He did not like to leave things unsettled. He also did not like stalemates. But she was right, he was on the verge of making a battle out of it for the mere reason that he was not used to being denied. He nodded his head, acceding to her. For now.

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   [1]: aftermath63.htm



	63. Chapter 63

aftermath63

Chapter Sixty-three

With early morning, the tavern was empty of patrons. The bargirls were all asleep, either in their own rooms or in the rented rooms of men who'd offered a coin or two for their company. The barkeep was drowsily sweeping away last night's debris from the floors while the minstrels loitered around the low burning fire. There were various twangs, plunks and jangles, as they entertained themselves with the tuning and cleaning of instruments. The lot of them looked up when Kall-Su and Lily descended from the upper level.

It was annoying, the blatant and unflinching stares directed their way.

All of them either openly curious, speculative or smirking with the sure knowledge of what the two of them had come from. One had to color with discomfort, not used to openly flaunting affairs. Not used to affairs at all, truth be told and most certainly not accustomed to the leering grins of common bards who thought they knew more than they did.

"About time." The red head rose from the table top he'd been perched on and sauntered forward, fearless and familiar in his stride and his expression. "Did you sleep well, love?" he grinned at Lily. Kall-Su thought about turning his insides to frozen lumps of flesh. Actually had the words of the spell tumbling about in his head when Lily squeezed his arm closer to her bosom and laughed back at the minstrel.

"Be nice, Dell, or he'll think bards are a mannerless lot."

The redhead -- this Dell person -- looked him full in the eye for the first time. There was some small portion of jealousy in his green gaze, and behind that just a touch of apprehension. Ah, so they did know who and what he was.

"No, we wouldn't want him to think that." There was something in the look that reminded Kall vaguely of Schneider. A reckless, fearless bravado even in the face of insurmountable odds. It did not particularly endear him, not with the attached sarcasm, but it did promote a kernel of respect.

"These are my friends." Lily said. "Dell. And that's Allun and Thizura and Crayl who leads this troupe." She indicated each in turn.

They nodded carefully at him, somewhat more cautious than Dell. He did not return the nod. He did not bother to introduce himself. He was not in the habit of mingling with bohemians traveling through his city. He was not in the habit of interacting at all with the common folk. Lily looked as if she were unsure of whether she should go about it herself. She looked up at him, at the frozen look that had come over his face and bit her lip. Some of her humor faded. She said in a quieter voice.

"You know who he is." Uncomfortable. He made her uncomfortable and he did not know whether he should be guilty for it, or offended. He felt increasingly ill at ease himself, not knowing her mind. He felt the tension in her body, pressed against his. Did she fear for the safety of her friends? Friends in who's company she obviously felt more comfort?

"We know." Crayl, who was thin faced and wise eyed nodded. Not friendly, not hostile, merely accepting. Not one of them called him _My Lord_, or offered obeisance. This was not the place for it. Not the circumstances.

He pulled his arm from hers, making a distance between them. She would not come back with him and he would not linger here a moment longer under their stares. He inclined his head at her, the mask back in place and repeated his offer.

"Think about what I asked. I've duties to attend." Which he did and none of which he intended to undertake. But it was an irrefutable excuse. He strode out without waiting for her to reply. Hit the street outside where it was easier to breath and the morning light made him blink and squint his eyes. No one close by. No one that would notice if he couldn't stand to cling to the ground any longer and summoned air elementals to buffer him skywards.

Straight up. Fast. Until the city was a child's model beneath him and he was alone enough to scream if he wanted to out of sheer frustration. But he didn't, for the frustration was tempered with such a feeling of euphoria that he could hardly bear it. He felt powerful. Wild energies gathered in transparent currents in the air about him, drawn by the exhilaration of his mood. He waved a hand at them, laughing, casting an offhanded snare and the elementals scattered, wary of being trapped. He didn't really want the service of any of them, having quite a few at his beck and call as it was, and these being of the small, relatively powerless sort. They were always drawn to power, they always lurked around the edges of workings, curious to the core. One ignored them mostly, or chased them away if they became a distraction. They did not usually get this close to him, rightfully fearful. He could only imagine the aura he must have been exuding for them to be so bold.

They came back, keeping a little more distance, still inquisitive. He felt the interest of an older one, drawn by the play of the younglings. This one pricked his interest, even past the giddiness. Cold and powerful and old as the mountains. One of the big ones that rarely showed themselves. One of the ones he might have gone to a great deal of trouble to subdue and force into servitude, if he'd been in the magic gathering mood. He wasn't. He was in the mood to think about Lily. To dredge his mind for all the instances she'd been around when he hadn't had the will to notice or had been pretending she didn't matter. She'd sang him so many songs that he only half remembered in the darkness of that place. Fought for him in that place when he'd given up fighting for himself.

The ice elemental ventured closer, intrigued by the flavor of his power and his disinterest in it. Very old. Incomprehensibly powerful. It swirled around him and the little ones flocked to it like moths to a great, frozen light. The mage part of him couldn't ignore it any longer. He reached out a tendril of inquisitive power to gauge it and it recoiled, skittish and obviously ignorant of human magic.

_Don't pry then, if you do not wish to be investigated in turn._ He told it and it swept away at the sending, startled. Some elementals engaged in conversation. Some had no more inkling of corporeal thought than the running water of a stream.

The winds had taken him out from the city. It was nothing more than a small black spot in the distance. She was right. They probably were wondering where he was about now. He ought to get back, if only to avoid explaining where he'd been. Back towards the city then, but not before he noticed with nothing more than passing interest the thin line of a caravan traveling across the plains from the southern mountains. One more group of merchants to fill the markets with goods from the south. It might be a profitable season after all, even with the upset caused by the Prophet's machinations.

Lily sighed, clasped her arms about herself and forced her eyes to move from the door Kall-Su had walked through. Think about the offer? It was all she could think about. That and last night. And her incredible good fortune and the miserable dilemma that she still had no answer to.

"What did he ask?" Crayl idly adjusted the taughtness of a lute string. "For you to return to the castle with him?"

She blinked at him in surprise. He was too observant by far.

"Will you?" he asked when she didn't answer.

"I don't know." She finally said.

"More the fool you." Thizura said and added emphatically. "Gods, he actually looks better in the light of day than under cover of night. I'm in love."

"You fall in love twice a week at least." Allun said calmly, rubbing oil into the melon shaped belly of his lute. "And out of it as quickly. And even if he weren't out of your league and had a taste for boys, which he obviously doesn't -- I believe his heart lies elsewhere." Allun smiled at Lily, who felt a blush rising at the talk of hearts. Mere sex was not as fearful a ground to tread with her as that of love.

"He doesn't like our Dell. Jealous." Allun added.

"You don't have to be jealous not to like Dell." Thizura shot back. Dell glared good naturedly at the both of them.

"Please." Lily said. "I really, really wish you'd stop bantering about this."

"Then you shouldn't have taken him upstairs for a private dance." Dell said, with a little more malice. "Does he live up to his name? Are you frostbit from the cold?"

"Dell!" There was a tone of admonishment to Crayl's usually soft voice. "Let her be. It's no small matter."

No small matter. Oh, what a dreadfully massive understatement that was. All her life, she'd never had decisions to make that would impact her existence. They'd all been made for her. No choice. No freedom. And now everything she might ever have wanted was offered her and she was forced to choose between her lifelong dream of becoming a true minstrel and the very new and painfully vital pull of --- what? Lust? Love? A connection of some sort that pulled at her heart and deeper, that alternately hurt her and elated her. There was no having one without loosing the other. No small matter, indeed.

Kall-Su landed on the tower roof. He hadn't been up here since his attempt at suicide. It made him uneasy, recalling that state of mind. He had to magic open the door to gain access to the stairs. Back to his chambers with no one the wiser. It still was relatively early. He changed clothes, getting rid of rumpled plain garb and donning more elegant garments. Keitlan was coming down the hall when he stepped out with a tray in her hands and a thoughtful expression on her broad face. "My lord." She was surprised to see him about. "You won't take breakfast in your chambers?"

"No. Not today."

She blinked at him. He was breaking habits and she did not know how to deal with the deviation from order. He walked past her, leaving her standing there with the tray in her hands, staring at his back. Down to the hall where breakfast was always laid out on a table by the hearth for armsmen, servants and guests alike to partake of. Gara and Arshes were down there, sitting side by side, talking low voiced to each other. Half a dozen guards were hastily filling plates and wolfing down poached eggs, thick slabs of ham and fresh bread before heading to duty. Yoko was, but not Schneider. She smiled at him, but there was a bit of exhaustion behind her eyes, as if she'd had a sleepless night.

"Don't usually see you this early." She stated the obvious. "You look better than you did yesterday. You okay?"

"Yes. Is Schneider?"

"His head still hurts, but its getting better. I think it'll take a few days to go away. Its probably a ghost injury anyway, since he can't magic it away. Goddess, you don't know how nasty a wound that was, Kall. I really thought he was dead."

"So did I." He admitted. Which was why he'd overreacted with the spell. Which was why there were innocent people dead. He sighed, having managed to avoid thinking about that so far this morning. He could not recall exactly what he'd ordered done about it. Recompense, he thought. But, truly, it deserved something else. He was at a loss what that something might be, not in the habit of begging pardon for his actions. Perhaps Yoko might be of help. She was terribly good at getting to the root of people oriented problems.

"I do not know exactly what to do about the --- man who lost his family." He said carefully. He took a cup of strong, hot coffee, but declined food, not in the mood for it with this problem back on his mind. She looked up at him, large eyed and sympathetic.

"That poor man. I heard what happened yesterday at the gates. I understand why you looked so spooked when we saw you. It was grief speaking. You know that, right?"

She sounded like Lily. He followed her to the table where Gara and Arshes sat.

"Perhaps." He grudgingly admitted. "Still, it shouldn't have happened. I was remiss. I was sloppy."

"You had two arrows sticking out of you." Gara mumbled between mouthfuls of ham and eggs. "Things happen."

"Its not a war." Kall said, remembering all too many times when a mere two innocent casualties would have meant nothing. Not a speck in the mountains of bodies that had piled up during the wars.

"It is if the bandits make it one." Arshes said. "They declared it the moment they aimed at you and Darshe."

"Not in this city." He said firmly. "I will not have it in this city. When I came back here after --- Ansasla -- I promised these people my protection. Now they spread worse rumors about me than they do about the bandits. Those assassins killed none of the people of Sta-Veron."

"All right." Yoko interjected. "That's understood. No one wants violence in the streets. What we do want is the people to understand it was an accident. That you're as horrified by it as they are. Giving the widower gold will just seem like you're buying him off. What you need is a show that you're not the ice cold wizard up in his castle that doesn't give a damn."

He looked at her silently. She had that look in her eyes that said she was brainstorming. Her nails tapped a rhythmic little beat on the tabletop.

"Offer to hold memorial services here." She said, brightening.

"What?" He blinked at her.

"What greater honor for the family of a common merchant? We get Father Cittaro down here to perform the rites. Let all the merchant's relatives and friends attend and you be there so everybody can see that you mourn too."

"But --"

She waved away his objection, eyes alight with the fervor of her own creation. "You bedazzle them with how generous you are. Word spreads and all the bad talk turns good."

"Its not half bad." Gara said, finishing off the last of his breakfast and sitting back with a look of contentment on his face. Yoko beamed at him. "Its perfect. Its just a matter of making arrangements. Someone official looking. If you had a steward that would do it. You don't have nearly enough staff for running a castle, you know. Maybe Arshes Nei and I would be impressive enough to make the offer seem heartfelt."

"I do regret it." He said sourly. "You do not have to make it seem as if it is all some great charade. I just have no great desire to make a temple out of this hall."

"Not for long." She patted his hand in a motherly fashion, as if he were being intractable and she felt the need to coax him out of it. He looked at her narrowly and pulled his hand out from under hers.

"Do what you will. I leave it in your hands."

He left her, not wanting to find himself trapped talking about funeral rites in his own hall. Not comfortable with that notion at all. He took himself back upstairs to his study and worried at the notion of townsfolk crowding his hall. Resentful, accusing townsfolk, to whom he was supposed to look rightfully apologetic. He could not do that and maintain the shield. And if he could not maintain the aura of ice then he couldn't protect himself against the stigma of their judgment. If the ice was thick enough, it didn't matter what anyone thought.

_I hate this._ He rested his head in his hand and stared sightlessly at the grainy pattern of the desktop. _ I wish Lily would come here with me._ But nothing was ever so simple or easy.

"What in hell did you let Yoko talk you into?"

He blinked, startled and straightened. He had no notion how long he'd been sitting there, day dreaming. Schneider stood in the doorway, disheveled looking, a vaguely annoyed expression on his face. It might have been the headache.

"The funeral rites?"

"Stupid idea."

"It makes sense." Kall sighed, forced into the position of having to defend a plan that he was in no wise comfortable with himself.

"You start making this grand a gesture and they'll expect it of you for every little thing."

"No. This wasn't a little thing. I can't let it be a little thing anymore. It's not the same as it was."

Schneider stared at him, then sniffed and plopped gracelessly down into the chair facing the desk. "You've gotten so conscionable, Kall. Such a good little liege lord."

"Are you trying to be discourteous or is the ill-temper from the head ache Yoko says you still have?"

One dark brow arched at that. A long fingered hand fluttered up to massage one temple. "A little of both, maybe." Grudging admittal.

"I'm sorry." Kall-Su said. "I'm sorry for your pain. It's my fault they were left to make mischief in the city at all."

"God, don't presume to carry guilt because you couldn't protect _me._" It was sullenly said. Schneider was feeling most definitely surly. Kall's head was beginning to hurt. He wasn't surprised Schneider had no liking for Yoko's proposed expression of sorrow. Schneider very seldom admitted to misdeeds of any kind. Much less actively repented them. He wondered what Schneider would think of his other problem. Gods, he wanted to talk to somebody and there were so few people that he trusted with the baring of his soul. Two now, if he counted Lily. Oh, and he wanted to. He wanted to loose himself in her, but was so dreadfully afraid she would repel him. That she might turn on him and pierce him to the core. Besides, she was the problem, not the solution in this case.

But, Schneider on the subject of women was highly predictable. Schneider was not tactful in the least sense. Schneider trumpeted his conquests for the world to see. Kall was not so willing to have his own affairs made light of. He went back to the other issue instead.

"A gesture needs to be made. I wasn't in control when I cast that spell. I didn't think where I was or who might be caught in the backlash, I just reacted. How many years did you spend trying to teach me to avoid that? Lately things just seem to be slipping. I can't seem to focus and I despise it. I hate not being fully in control. I'd rather not have the power."

Schneider stared at him for a long, deliberative moment, the sarcasm and the irritation gone. "Then you have to get it back." He said finally. "I've told you what I think already. That you need to get away from here, but you're too stubborn to take my advice. Which probably also means you're too stubborn to let me help, even if you consciously wanted to. You're not as malleable as you were when you were eighteen."

Young minds were easy to mold. And Schneider had managed to take a boy with terrible emotional scarring and mold him into an articulate and powerful wizard.

"I know." Kall-Su sighed. "I still wonder if everything wouldn't be easier sometimes without the stigma of having to control this magic. What was it like, when you were without it? With those rune bracelets?"

"Hateful." Schneider drew in a hissing breath. "There is nothing about not having magic that I find attractive. You think life would be easier without it? Maybe you're right if you're content to be a farmer or a fat merchant, or a foot soldier in some army. I would have gone mad if I'd been without it much longer. I don't care who you are, are how virtuous you think you've become, once you've tasted power, you can't let it go. And the first time something you love is threatened and you can't defend it -- you can't imagine how it feels." For a moment, his eyes were clouded with too vivid recollection, then he shook his head and a spark of wryness came back.

"You're getting maudlin, Kall. A funeral in house is a wonderful idea, now that I think of it. It fits your mood perfectly." He stretched his legs out, leaning his head back against the back of the chair. "Well, now that you've got Yoko occupied, I've nothing to do to entertain myself. I'd go hunting bandits if they were close enough to reach in a reasonable amount of time. I wish one of you had left a live one for me. _ I_ happen to like a little bloody vengeance and I don't feel guilty about it afterwards."

"I don't feel guilty about that." Kall said. "And you're welcome to chase down any bandits you want. I don't feel inclined to leniency with them anymore. I would love to set you on them -- but you're right, they're not likely to be easy to find now."

"They'll show eventually." A slight smile touched Schneider's lips. "In the meantime, I need something to chase away the idea that my head ought to be hurting. I hate ghost wounds. I need a distraction. Care for a game of Pirates and Kings?"

Kall almost laughed, it was such an innocuous suggestion in the midst of all his other troubles. It was one of the few games he had ever taken the time for, being a puzzle of strategy rather than mere lazy recreation. Schneider had taught it to him. One of the few things he and Schneider had shared between themselves when he was growing up that Arshes had not been a part of. She had never had the patience for it. She hated loosing to Kall-Su and she always did, so she'd stopped playing.

"You're the pirate, of course." He rose to get the board. Schneider was always the pirate. It fit him so much better than the guise of the king.

"Of course. Prepare to have your kingdom sacked."

Schneider generally had won. Four out of five was the age old ratio, but it had been a long time since they'd played. A very long time. Things change.

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   [1]: aftermath64.htm



	64. Chapter 64

aftermath64

Chapter Sixty-four

It was amazing how quickly a castle could be transformed from the stoic place it had been, into a hall fit for funeral rites. It spoke eloquently of the tenacity of women, or one woman rather, who took notions in her teeth like a hound on the hunt and ran with them. Amazing also, that the whole metamorphosis could be avoided by the simple virtue of sheltering behind the doors of the upper levels where none of the frantic arrangement was taking place. Kall-Su supposed things were going smoothly. Yoko had said as much when she'd slipped by the study later that afternoon, mercifully interrupting a game that had gone dreadfully wrong from the first move. It seemed the merchant had reluctantly accepted the offer of funeral rites. Yoko claimed to have spoken to the man at length, but did not go into details. She understood people in a way that he nor Schneider ever could. Her tolerance was boundless. Her acceptance was generally universal.

The work went on into the night. The smell from the kitchens permeated the castle into the wee hours of morning. Kall honestly did not know what to expect, nor what was entirely expected of him. Yoko had been vague about that. He got very little in the way of sleep that night. Between anxiety over this upcoming public display, the reason for it, and recollections of last night's activities he lay awake and very much ill at ease. He was tired and fuzzy headed when morning finally did creep over the horizon and pulled on a bit of his arcane reserves to chase away the fatigue. He did not quite know what to do with himself. Keitlan sent one of the kitchen girls by with his breakfast, which meant she was mightily distracted by this whole thing and too busy to do it herself. The girl looked uncomfortable, but he thought this once it wasn't due to him, but rather what would be happening downstairs. He picked at breakfast, drank the coffee and sorted through his reduced wardrobe for the most severe thing he had to wear. Black. The same thing he'd worn to the impromptu meeting with the bandit representatives. And hadn't that encounter gone abysmally well? He tried not to be superstitious, but sometimes the urge just got the better of him. He put it on just to spite himself, looked at himself in the mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door and thought it made him look ghostly and pale. His eyes looked too big in his face, which made him seem damned young and that annoyed him. He narrowed them and glared at his reflection. Better. He still looked like he'd barely seen twenty, but at least he didn't look apprehensive and uncertain. Which he was.

He hoped Yoko had planned the rites for morning, because he didn't think he could stand to wait all day. He felt stupid not asking for details. Yesterday he hadn't wanted to know. He prowled the upper levels until he got tired of wondering like a lost soul and went looking for Yoko. She wasn't in her rooms, but Schneider was, still abed and threatening dire and unpleasant things if he was not left in peace. One supposed he had no intention of attending the funeral rites. It was probably just as well.

He went to the solar next to his library, which had a balcony overlooking the main courtyard. Stone latticework made a railing about it and thick columns rose to support the overhang. He leaned against one of the columns where he was mostly hidden from view from below and looked to see what activity was taking place below. The guards were out in full dress uniform and a great many of them. He suspected Kiro had been even less enthusiastic about Yoko's plan than he had, what with recent assassination attempts and a dismal lack of security to think about. Opening the castle gates for the city to pour in had to have him pulling out his hair. Common people were drifting in the wide open main gates. Merchants, craftsmen, common laborers. One could almost tell from their dress what class of folk they were. The guards were not lax in their scrutiny of those entering. Everyone was stopped at the gate and politely checked for hidden weapons. Kiro was not taking chances. Kall-Su wondered what other precautions his captain had taken.

There was a flurry of activity just outside the gates. People already inside gathered to look and see out. The guards cleared them back, making a path for a garland draped wagon, bearing two painted, wooden coffins. A white robed priest followed after, his reedy voice chanting a prayer. Behind him came more people. Family, close friends. A man in the midst of them that might have been the father and husband. Kall could only indistinctly remember his face. So it had begun. He didn't know if he ought to wait or go down. A priest of Eno Marta was performing the rites and he didn't know how much pomp and ritual funeral rites looked over by that patron goddess entailed. He did not wish to be trapped down there if it were going to take forever to get the thing started. He very much wanted to make a dutiful appearance and flee. Plainly astounding that he did not flinch in the face of armies or challenging incredibly powerful elementals, and yet the prospect of this morning had him nervous to the point of sweating.

They passed the gates and beyond his view into the main hall. Everyone seemed inclined to follow and the yard was left with nothing but guards standing at ready. He chewed on his lip and waited, assuming Yoko would send someone after him when she thought he needed to be there. Not wanting to go a minute sooner than that. The door to the solar opened quietly and Keitlan approached him, looking relieved to have tracked him down.

"Milord? The priest is starting the rites and Lady Yoko sent me to ask if you'd come down."

He nodded, schooling his face into neutrality, and walked past her. Down the stairs and into the main hall where he knew every eye would be drawn to him, every face filled with accusation. And they were. He felt it the moment he left the shadow of the stair, as if they had all been waiting for him to appear. A hundred sets of eyes that slowly migrated his way, drawn to him by the notice of their neighbors. A rustling of clothing of bodies turning. Of small whispered comments. But not all filled with denunciation. Most were heavy with awe, with no small nervousness to be here in this hall, in the presence of the Ice Lord himself. Probably none of these people had ever crossed the boundary of the castle gates in their lives. Probably none of them would again. Oh, there was accusation there, but it was tempered with other less troublesome things. They had taken the coffins to the front of the hall where a platform had been constructed before the hearth. There were heaps of garlands surrounding them. He couldn't guess where Yoko had come up with so many with spring so newly upon them. The old priest was standing behind and above them, behind a podium.

He hesitated for a second and Yoko and Kiro descended upon him from different directions. Kiro didn't say a word, just settled himself a step behind him, while Yoko took his arm, entwined it in hers and guided him towards the front of the hall. Everyone was standing. All the chairs and benches had been cleared out, although the tables had been pushed to the side of the wall and covered with linens in preparation of a funeral feast after the ceremony. She did not force him into the forefront, merely stopped with him along the sidelines against the wall, at a respectful distance from the real mourners and stood there with him, a presence that everyone in the room was aware of.

It might have been a signal she'd worked out with the old priest. The old man raised his voice and gathered the attention of the room to him. He launched into a dissertation of the afterlife. Kall-Su stared at the coffins dismally, blocking out the words. He'd heard too much debate on the state of the soul in regards to the righteous man from the Prophet.

It was finished eventually, with much crying and sobbing from several female relatives along the front line of mourners. The coffins were taken out one by one, to be loaded back on the wagon. Tonight there would be a funeral pyre outside the city where the winds would catch the ash and whisk it away to freedom. There were very few graves here, for most of the year the ground was too hard to break.

Yoko squeezed his arm and whispered. "Five minutes." Which he supposed meant she wished him to remain at least that long. She unwound herself from him and melted into the crowd. Kiro stood a yard away from him, stern faced and silent, watching the gathering of mourners as if he expected them to draw knives and start attacking.

Someone else came quietly up along his other side. Kiro's eyes flicked that way, then back to the crowd, unconcerned. He almost didn't look himself, he was so preoccupied.

"My lord." Very softly, very deferentially spoken. Lily stood far enough away not to seem presumptuous, a black shawl over her red skirt and white peasant blouse. He drew in a breath and stopped himself from taking a step towards her. He could not quite keep himself from staring.

"This is a very good thing you've done." She said.

"A good thing for a bad one." He returned, very softly.

"Things even out." She said, shrugging. "The word on the street today is better than it was yesterday."

Her mind worked the same as Yoko's. Practicality of a vein that he did not possess. He wished Kiro wasn't so close. He wished he could draw Lily away to a private place because he just wanted to touch her again.

"You came." It wasn't even a whisper. He mouthed the words and she understood and her eyes beneath the hair flickered uneasily away from him.

"I heard of the open funeral rites." She said, an explanation. An excuse. It hurt. He looked away and into the face of Yoko coming towards him with a man in tow. A man he did recognize now. The merchant. He drew a breath, blindsided and not prepared after the surprise of seeing Lily, of having his wits scattered by Lily.

School his features. Don't look as distraught as he felt. He didn't even know this man's name. Why hadn't someone told him his name? He felt Kiro straighten behind him. Lily stepped back a pace, but no further. Yoko smiled slightly at him, her arm laced with the arm of the merchant.

"Lord Kall-Su, this is Master craftsman Cornel. I have expressed to him the depth of your regret over what happened."

The man stared. The anger on his face had faded to weariness, the grief eating up all the other more fiery emotions. There still resided in his eyes a simmering denunciation. How could it not? What had he said the last time he'd been face to face with this man? He could not recall. If he repeated himself, so be it.

"I am deeply sorry, Master Cornel. Your loss -- this thing should not have happened. Circumstances drove me beyond rational thought and innocent lives were taken. I regret it."

"You regret it?" the man said dully. "How can you know the meaning? How can you know what I've lost?"

Kiro almost took a step forward, protectively, as if words were a threat. The merchant ignored him, ignored everything but his own clenched hands. "I fought for you when I was a young man, during the last war and you never cared then when innocents died. Why should I believe you now? I know assassins drove you to it, I found that out since, but it don't make much difference to my wife and girl. All that talk from the caravans from the south about magic being the devil's work and it being the destruction of us all sooner or later -- never believed it before. But now, after what you did -- because you weren't _rational _-- makes me believe them." He shook his head once, then shrugged out of Yoko's arm and walked slowly into the crowd of his fellows. They swallowed him up with sympathetic embraces.

Yoko looked after the man, torn. Her eyes huge and worried. "Oh, Kall ---" she started and he shook his head at her.

"No." Just no. He wanted out. Even the draw of Lily's presence couldn't keep him here another minute. He walked past Kiro, face gone impassive and cold, shields slammed back into place.

Up the stairs, seething with guilt - outrage - indignity - recollection. He did know the meaning. He did understand the loss.

"My lord."

He was at the top of the stairs. Lily was half way up, looking as if she feared being caught there with him. He glared at her and whirled, angry at her for that. Not wanting forced sympathy from her when she did not wish to be here to begin with.

She followed him down the empty hall. "Please wait, my lor --"

"Don't call me that." He hissed at her and did turn and fixed her with his coldest, most menacing stare. She closed the distance, not balking at a look that almost everyone else was extremely wary of.

"Forgive me." She said and stood there looking at him as if she expected a yea or nay answer to that plea. He opened his mouth. Shut it. Stymied by her calm, expectant stare.

"For what?" he finally asked, grudgingly.

"For whatever it is that I've done to make you look at me so balefully. I didn't mean it, I assure you."

Whatever she'd done? For getting his hopes up and dashing them. For being a witness to what that man said.

"Nothing. You did nothing." _Thank you for coming. Enjoy the festivities._ He turned away from her.

"Kall-Su?" She didn't touch him. She didn't have to. He froze, shut his eyes a moment, while his back was to her. She shattered his shields so effortlessly with something so simple as his name upon her lips. How had this happened? If he kept playing this game she was going to hurt him.

"I didn't come for the rites -- I came to see you." She said it steadily, coaxingly, as if she knew what was going through his head. He glanced over his shoulder at her and she smiled shyly. "It was a good enough excuse to get into the castle without Keitlan wondering if I was back to steal the silverware. She has a low opinion of bards."

Someone was coming up stairs. He heard the tap of boots on stone. She did and bit her lip. He caught her hand and pulled her down the hall and into the library. Tried to let her go, but she clasped his hand with her slender, callused fingers.

"Loss makes people cruel." She said. "I know what you said is true. And I know you won't let it happen again. Don't dwell on it."

"I had no such intention." He said.

"Liar." She accused softly. "I could see it on your face."

He didn't know what to say to that. So he didn't say anything, just stood there uncomfortably with the heat of her hand burning his. She sighed. Looked about the room, at the books and the various collected items on the shelves.

"I -- dreamed about you last night." She said, then smiled a little wickedly. "Some of them were even sleeping ones."

He colored a little at that. She was not the shy girl one might take her at upon first glance. She had proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt two nights past. She had learned things in her scant years that he in all of his, had never dreamed of.

"When I was a little girl and traveled with my second master -- he was the leader of a gypsy troupe -- I used to look at his books. He kept them in a chest. There were maybe five of them. I'd never seen a book before. He treasured them more than gold. I remember loving the pretty pictures. He taught me to read music but not words. I was always sad about that, because I just knew that wonderful stories went with the pictures. You've read all of these?"

"Most of them."

"Is it true, that they hold worlds within them?" There was such a look of yearning on her face.

"I -- could teach you to read, if you like?" he suggested it hesitantly, offering it like a bone to a dog he wanted to lure within his reach. "But, it would take time."

"I would love that." Wistfully said, as if she knew she hadn't the time.

"You won't come back here to stay, will you?" He phrased it as a question, but he knew the answer.

"I didn't say that."

He drew a frustrated breath. "I don't understand you, Lily."

"I'm sorry." She said softly, and slipped in so close to him that he had the reflexive urge to step back. All he saw was the top of her head until she looked up, inviting. Gods, she threw him off balance. He didn't know what to expect of her.

She sighed again, he seemed to be making her do an awful lot of that, and rose to her toes, placing a light, brief kiss upon his lips. "I think I should go. But if you wish, I might come back tonight? If you could arrange it---?"

It was not what he had hoped. But it was better than not having her at all. It was simple enough to manage, since she had a fear of wagging tongues. She never had to pass a gate or walk by the scrutiny of a guard. He fetched her under cover of night and with her clinging to him as if she were convinced the winds would give out and drop the both of them to their deaths, flew up to the tower roof and through that back entrance to his chambers. He felt like an adolescent doing something he ought not, with all the subterfuge, but he wasn't sure she would have come had he walked her in through the main hall. He put a spell on the door to keep anyone out who couldn't magic it open and spent a very pleasant night loosing himself in her.

And a dismal morning after when she woke before him at an hour he had not willingly woken at in recent memory and begged to be spirited away. It was entirely frustrating and yet he found himself backed into a not terribly uncomfortable corner with her. If he pushed, she got skittish. Got that look in her fathomless dark eyes that said she was on the verge of running. He thought he understood her to a degree. She was young and newly granted her own head. She needed to run with it. She needed to taste freedom -- and her concept of it seemed to be wondering aimlessly about the country with a pack of penniless musicians -- more than she needed permanent stone walls hemming her in. At least for now. She was not decided though, _he_ had her uncertain of her own wishes. But he was not adept enough of talking a woman into, or out of anything to know what pretty words to say that might change her mind. He should have talked with Schneider.

As it was, he was content enough having what he did of her. She made him feel good. She made him forget old guilt's and old betrayals. She told him of her life as a slave. Of the things she had done, of the many men and of the shames she had endured. She was a little frightened he would think less of her for it. That was so very clear in the nervous catch in her voice, in the way she let her hair shift to cover her eyes. He told her things he had never willingly told anyone before and she did not recriminate him for them. Her sins were so much less than his, but somehow it seemed an even exchange.

Days passed. Bandits did not plague them. The city did not rise up in arms against him. The people in general were well pleased with him, according to what Lily had picked up and she seemed to be in the hub of gossip and speculation due to her profession. The fates were generous. And as always, it was only a matter of time before their fickle favor turned the other way. When they gave with one hand, they always sooner or later took away with the other.

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   [1]: aftermath65.htm



	65. Chapter 65

aftermath65

Chapter Sixty-five

The caravan passed through the gates just after noon, when the day was warm from a morning of clear skies and almost no breeze blowing down from the God's Tooth mountains. Like every other trading procession that entered the city, it was stopped by the guards at the gates and given a cursory inspection. It was clearly from the south. The men accompanying it were most certainly of southern decent. Nothing of the northern highlands about them. Nothing to arouse suspicion. The caravan carried mostly luxury goods that Sta-Veron grasped for hungrily. Fine western wines and ales. Dried fruits that could not be grown in the cold north. Bolts of silk and linen. Things for the most part that would find their way into the wealthier houses of the city.

No one noticed the old man. No one paid him the slightest heed. He walked in beside the merchant, so thin he appeared anorexic, a face that was lined and non-descript. The guards hardly looked at him and when they did they suddenly discovered other things to occupy their attention. He walked into the city as if he didn't exist and after he'd passed, the guards did not even recall his presence. He moved slowly, like an aged man. Leaning upon the sturdy length of his staff. The city moved around him, uncaring. He slipped through the noonday crowds like a wraith. The neatly cobbled streets eventually led inwards towards the tallest structure Sta-Veron boasted. The castle, which rested within its own walled boundaries. The old man stood on the street outside it, staring up at gray stone and limply hanging banners.

He did not remain long. No longer than any other tourist to Sta-Veron might in viewing the castle of its ruling lord. Cane in hand he made his way back into the commoner section of the city. He paid for a room at a moderately priced inn, in great need of rest. Physically, his body was weary from the travel. Physically he was failing with no easy way to halt the degradation. It was an annoyance that drove him beyond reason sometimes. That his body ailed when his mind was sharper than it had ever been. When he saw things clearer than he had ever seen them. Power licked at him from the inside, hammering at the mortal body that had never been meant to contain it. He held it at bay, being old enough and wise enough to have learned the ways to bypass it. To cheat when it came down to this eating away of mortal flesh. The decay was quickening now more than it ever had in the past. He did not have long before the body was gone completely and then, he had no notion what might become of the soul. He was not quite certain anymore that heaven would welcome it.

He slept the day through and woke when the chill of night drove away the last of the warmth. He found the cold distasteful. It made his bones ache. He wrapped a cloak about himself and wondered out of the inn, following the migration of the evening crowds to places of warmth where people gathered. He listened to the talk, finding bits and pieces of interest. He inserted himself into conversations with the smooth eloquence of a born speaker. Men listened to his words and eagerly volunteered information at his asking. They trusted him, the look in his eyes, the tone of his voice, the aura of the personality that he let the world see. They always had.

He drifted from place to place and finally found himself at the door of a tavern where the lilting sounds of music seeped out onto the street. Not the bawdy tunes he'd heard in other taverns, but the sweet, melodic strain of a love ballad. He stepped inside, something hypnotic and familiar about the flavor of the voice.

Ah. He saw her seated amidst a half circle of other musicians. There was such a power that she radiated, sitting there with the attention of the crowded bar upon her, that he almost did not recognize her. But her voice could not be forgotten. It held an illusive magic all its own. Surprising to find her here. He had assumed her dead.

He needed to sit down and think and someone made a place for him without even knowing why they did it. He took the chair without a word, hidden by the crowd, one long fingered hand stroking his jaw.

There were many, many nuances alive in this city. Many patterns to ponder and he had never acted hastily or rashly in his stratagems. Even with the decay threatening to devour him, he had to take the time to find the best pathway -- the easiest route to his goal. And his eventual triumph.

It was full summer now. As warm as it ever got in the northern plainlands between two great mountain ranges. One could go outside in nothing more than a tunic and skirt and not even feel a hint of the cold. Children ran about shirtless, shoeless, reckless in the summer abandon. It would not last for long. No more than a fraction of the summer the south enjoyed. The minstrels were growing restless. They had been stuck inside the walls of Sta-Veron for the whole of the winter and wanted to stretch their wings. Lily wanted it too, she wanted to see the world from a perspective never seen before. That of a free woman. She wanted to choose her own destiny and yet the thought of leaving this city -- the very thought of stepping outside those great gates made her heart pound with dread. Made a ball of pain curl up somewhere between heart and stomach and perch there, tormenting her. She tried not to think about it, knowing it would make her days miserable, knowing that it would linger on her face when she did see him during the nights and remind him of it as well. Not that he didn't dwell on it enough.

Oh, he didn't ask her anymore. He was by far too proud to whine at her about it, and too honorable to pressure her when he saw that she was coiled into a knot over it. He was cold when the subject came up. But the cold was his defense. She did not take it to heart. She knew what was behind it. She thought she had never loved anything as much as she loved him. It frightened her beyond reason. She was so afraid that she would loose herself, her will, her own ideals if she let herself be encompassed by him. Sometimes she could hardly breath in the anticipation of seeing him. Sometimes it hurt so much leaving him that she almost gave in to his desires and stayed. Sometimes she thought it would be easier to urge the minstrels to leave now and get it over with.

She saw Yoko in the market and the two of them browsed the shops together, talking idly. Lily had the money now to buy a trinket if she liked it. To even treat Yoko to a sweetmeat and a glass of cold cider. It felt good to be able to do that. To spend money honestly earned -- her very own money -- on a friend.

"Are you still leaving to enthrall the south with your talents?" Yoko asked.

"Maybe. There are so many places I wish to go. My friends have been to all of them."

"Ah, the life of a bard." Yoko grinned, then it faltered. "I wish I could go back home. I hardly know what welcome I'd receive. Rushie is getting restless here. It must be catching."

"You'll go with him?" Lily asked hesitantly.

"Of course. You don't think I'd let him loose on the world without me there to keep him in line? He keeps talking about a villa by the sea that he's in love with. I've never lived by the sea, so it might be interesting. I suppose anyplace Rushie is can't be boring."

"Oh." Lily said, feeling awful and selfish.

"I don't know what Gara and Arshes are going to do, but I heard him talking about maybe heading east, back to the boarder where he had a lot of men left high and dry when he took off after me and Rushie last year. Goddess, its been almost a year since all this started. Hard to believe. I guess when we all take off Kall can have his castle back again and some peace and quiet. We upset his solitude terribly."

"I don't think he minded." Lily almost whispered it. A bit of moisture gathered in the corner of her eye. All of the people in the world he trusted gone their separate ways and he would be alone again in that great stark castle. And the ice would creep up because it was the only thing that protected him against loneliness. She dug the heels of her hands into her eyes, miserable.

"Lily, what's wrong?" Yoko asked.

"I don't know if I can leave." She moaned. "Oh, gods, I want to, but I don't think I have the strength."

Yoko blinked at her. "Whyever not? What's keeping you?"

She looked up, one brazen tear rolling down her cheek. She wanted to tell someone. Someone other than the minstrels, who were biased one way, or Kall-Su, who was very definitely biased the other.

"If I leave, I'll be leaving someone I love. Who maybe loves me."

Yoko opened her mouth. Blinked in a moment's surprise before covering Lily's hands with her own. "Oh, Lily. That's wonderful --- uuhh, but maybe not, if you want to go on the road playing as badly as you do. Ohh, maybe not wonderful at all. Oh, what are you going to do? What does he say? Who is he?"

"I don't know what I'm going to do. He doesn't say anything anymore. He won't pressure me and that just makes it worse, because I know he's just being considerate."

"Well, how serious is it? Has he asked you to marry him?"

"What?" Lily almost yelped it.

"Some people do, you know? If they're not wizards above the rest of the world's idea of ethics and morality, that is." She said this last rather grumpily. Lily blinked at her owlishly.

"Okay." Yoko continued. "So do you think he'd wait for you to get it out of your system and come back?"

"I don't know." She admitted.

"Would he come with you?"

"He's - he's got responsibilities here."

"More important that you?"

_Yes. Just tell her,_ Lily thought. _Just tell her who and see if she thinks the same. No, don't tell her, she'll side against you then. She'll only back him and add her voice to those that want to make you stay. _

"I don't know. Maybe." She said it dully, because her mind kept telling her that no matter what Yoko said now, she would not be her ally in this if she knew who her lover was.

"Then maybe its just as well."

"Maybe." She was tired of a sudden. Her head hurt and she wanted nothing more than to find the sanctity of her shared loft and release the pressure with sleep.

"Please, please talk to me before you make a decision. I want to help." Yoko offered. Lily nodded, slipping away. She rubbed her temples absently, trying to massage away the feeling that her head was suddenly twice its normal size. She walked blindly for a while and miraculously found herself in the loft. It was empty, all her erstwhile roommates out in the city. The shutters were open, letting in air to cool the room. It was still dim in the corner she had taken for herself. The corner where she had first slept with Kall-Su. She sank down upon the blankets, bemused at the extent of her weariness. She shut her eyes.

"You little whore." A voice hissed by her ear.

She gasped, startled. Tried to force awareness and energy to her limbs, but they were too leaden to move. She managed to pry her lids open and stared up into a shadow silhouetted face. A body that leaned over hers, one hand resting on the floor by her head.

"Dirty little slut." Again the hissing voice that was as much inside her head as something she heard out side it. "You lay with him when you knew he belonged to me. You knew the sin you committed."

Gods, gods, no. What she could see of the face was altered, but the voice was the same. The intimidation radiating from it made her shrivel up inside with fear. How could he be here? How could the Master have survived the destruction that took the Place Without Windows? Why had he come after her?

Then it occurred to her, though the horror that clawed its way through her body, that he had not come for her. That she mattered very little in the scope of the Master's desires. That he had come here for something else entirely. Then the fear turned cold and frantic, but try as she might, she could not even get a scream to pass her frozen lips.

The thought of another winter in Sta-Veron was unbearable. Schneider was not a creature by nature that thrived in the cold. Fire was his element, fire was his nature. Hemmed in by the snow for one long northern winter had liken to driven him mad. He had no wish to be trapped for yet another one. There were only so many places open for him to go. A fair deal of the south was off limits unless he wanted a series of small wars on his hands. A number of the places that had been his before the final days of Ansasla were gone. Cities destroyed, towns eaten up by the destruction, estates just flattened. He used to have a world open to him, now he found his options severely limited.

He hated it. Hated the notion of anything being declared off limits. If he'd been in a more irritable mood, or Yoko had not become an attachment he had no desire to shake, he would have ridden into Meta-Rikan or Judas or any of those other high and mighty jewels of the south and dared them to make an issue of his presence. He would have gladly taken on Larz and his high council, Geo Note and his self-righteous clerics and all, for what they'd done to Yoko. But she was adamant against that. She was adamant against any type of confrontation with the southern alliance. It was too tense a situation already, she preached at him, for him to insert his very volatile self into the picture.

So he thought about Keladedra on the coast, which he did favor, and which he thought Yoko would like very much. One would not mention that it had been his and Arshes Nei's getaway for longer than Yoko had been alive. One hoped the Thunder Empress would not see fit to mention it either. Fair was fair, after all. If he allowed the thing with Gara to go on unhindered, the least she could do was not find ways to make Yoko hard to deal with.

Yoko would have been perfectly happy to stay here. Yoko could make a home anywhere. She could insinuate herself into any situation and make herself welcome and cherished. He was not so easy to tolerate. He made people uneasy. He frightened people. It was not a characteristic that he found in the least annoying. He didn't have that niggling little need for acceptance that plagued Kall-Su. The apprehension in people's eyes did not in the least fracture _his _ self-esteem. It bolstered it, if anything.

They would be just as happy to see him go as they would be sad to see Yoko gone. He'd had to promise her they'd come back. She had almost been in tears at the prospect of a permanent separation. Why she'd formed such an attachment to so drafty and rustic a place as Sta-Veron was beyond him. There was nothing here that he found in the least appealing, nothing that might particularly draw him back -- save perhaps for its lord, and one just did not go about boasting that weakness for anyone to hear.

Kall-Su was the only thing that made him hesitate in his plans for migration to warmer climates and that only because he was not completely certain the younger wizard was quite recovered from the ordeal with Angelo. That thing with the blood over the deaths of the merchant's family the other day was a sure sign of things not quite as stable as they ought to be. If the damned bandits would get their wits together and start plaguing the city and its outlying provinces things would get better. At least Kall would have something to focus on. As long as his people were competent enough to keep assassins out of the city. That had been a disconcerting experience. It had taken four days for the his body to finally convince his head that it was all right and to let the ghost headache fade away.

Yoko came into his room, fresh from shopping in the city while he was thinking about Keladedra. She had bought him a cloak clasp made from beaten bronze and silver, boasting six bear claws about its diameter. It was barbaric enough to catch his interest. She was pleased that he liked it, but preoccupied enough otherwise to make him inquire what was wrong.

"Oh, I'm just going to miss it here, is all. I've made so many friends."

"They'll still be here." He shrugged.

"Not all of them. Lily's probably going to leave. I spoke with her today."

"No loss there, she was imprudent. She compared me to the Prophet."

Yoko waved a hand at him, brushing away his opinions. "You deserved it. You were being an ass. Its so refreshing to see someone stand up to you once and a while."

He sniffed indignantly at that. Yoko did it constantly. She backed him down most of the time, which was frankly amazing.

"I'm going to go and listen to her tonight." Yoko said. "She was sort of upset when I talked to her today. She wants to leave so bad, but there's someone here she doesn't want to say good-bye to. I thought I'd talk to her again tonight. Do you want to come?"

He shrugged, half remembering the interest Kall had tried to hide in the girl. Kall-Su so rarely showed interest in trivial things like females, that when he did, it stuck in the mind. He wondered idly what had become of that.

"It might be entertaining." He admitted. Taverns full of drunken people generally were.

They decided to take dinner out since they were going, and as soon as the sun began to sit, were on their way. Schneider, for no other reason than sheer perversity, paused by Kall-Su's library on the way out and asked in a preternaturally congenial tone of voice.

"We're going to see your little slave girl sing, care to come?"

Kall just blinked at him owlishly, startled out of some passage or another he'd been scrutinizing, completely at a loss for words. He might have thrown a lightening ball, there was so much shock in the expression, which was as good an indication as any that Kall hadn't totally forgotten about the girl.

"Oh, guess not." He said with a blithe smile, and whisked away to catch up with Yoko.

They walked, the weather being nice. She took up his hand, which was just - foreign - and pleasant and made him feel not quite as intimidating as he generally liked. People stared, but people always stared at him, either covertly or openly. He was not an entirely unfamiliar thing to them, having wasted a good bit of time within the boundaries of the city before Yoko had admitted back into her good graces. Though he had by far a darker reputation than their own lord, he was somewhat more attainable, and a great deal more likely to mingle with common folk. With Yoko at his side, he was treated somewhat like a tamed tiger on leash. A hazardous, temporarily safe thing, to be treated nonetheless with utmost respect.

He liked the boisterous noise of taverns thought, they suited his nature. Someone cleared a very nice table for them, and a nervous, but bright eyed barkeep brought out what must have been his finest bottle of wine. Serving girls and girl's for hire flocked about their table, intrigued. Yoko glared and leaned against his arm possessively whenever one got too forward in her attentions. That jealousy amused him greatly.

There were two bards already playing, an effeminate little blonde and a tall redhead. They were singing a tune which blended tenor and baritone harmoniously. Yoko asked one of the hovering bargirls where the rest of the musicians were and the girl replied that the evening was just getting started and the rest would be out in due time to give the first two their reprieve. Gaming began at a fair number of tables. Dice and cards and Highjack stones. Nothing so sophisticated here as Pirates and Kings. Schneider found more interest in the games of chance than he did with the music for which Yoko had come to see. Even when the other minstrels came out he let himself be distracted by a card game. The other players were a bit apprehensive of his presence, superstitious wariness in their eyes, until he sincerely promised that cheating at cards was not one of the uses he put his magic to. It would have been rude not to take him at his word and no one in their right mind was purposefully rude to Dark Schneider. Besides it was a game of chance more than strategy and he lost as much as the next man and his coin, tainted by magic or not was just as attractive as any other.

He was a great success, once the drink began to flow freely and the patrons had decided he was not going to cast evil spells on them. For the most part he forgot Yoko's presence entirely. She was somewhere closer to the place the minstrel's were performing and he trusted no one in their right mind to molest her since she had very clearly come in with him. The only time he paid any heed to the bards at all was when the girl put down her lute and took up one of those sultry, gypsy dances. Most of the men in the tavern found themselves distracted by that. He lost a hand of cards because he wasn't paying attention. Won it back the next round and ended up with about the same amount of coin he'd started with by the time he'd finished.

Yoko drifted back to the table eventually, when the minstrel's had finished their set, and only one of them remained strumming a tune on his lute. She had a disconsolate expression on her face.

"She was too tired to talk with me." She said, pouting. Her eyes had the look she got when she badly wanted to pry in someone else's business. He wrapped an arm about her waist and pulled her into his lap, more than a little intoxicated from all the cheap ale he'd consumed after the one good bottle of wine. She wrinkled her nose at him distastefully, not drunk in the least herself.

"Some people don' need your guiding hand in their lives." He surmised, not at his most tactful at the present. He ran a hand up her thigh and she glared at him, primly removing the member from her leg.

"Well, be that as it may, she was abrupt and it just wasn't like her and I think she must be really upset for it to be effecting her like this."

"Lets go back to the castle. I've got an itch I need you to scratch."

"Rushie!" She blushed and looked around the table at the grinning faces of the other players. She wriggled off his lap, which in itself practically had him standing at attention and looked down at him, hands on hips. "You're drunk." She accused.

"I can be not drunk like this!" he snapped his fingers, or tried to and missed, then attempted it again successfully.

"Then why don't you?" she suggested dryly.

He grinned at her lazily. "Because it feels good this way. You should try it."

"My father taught me better."

"Figures." He waved a hand to dismiss the notion of Geo Note.

"And, I didn't come here to get smashed, I came to see a friend."

"Which didn't want to be seen." He reminded.

"Which is reason enough to assume she's unhappy."

"If she's mooning after a man, you sure don't have what it takes to make her _not_ .unhappy, little girl."

"Oh, shut up." She snapped, spun on her heel and stormed away from him, heading towards the door. Perhaps they might get back to the castle promptly after all. It was just a matter of lightening Yoko's mood.

He finished the last of his ale and surged to his feet to follow her. He brushed past an old man on his way without out even noticing. But the old man's eyes followed him. Stayed glued to his back until he was well and gone from the tavern, then slowly drifted back to the place where the musicians had been playing.

For a while, the old man hadn't been able to breath properly. The air had rattled harshly and unevenly in his chest, so eaten up by rage and frustration had he been. He'd sat at a booth against the wall and watched Schneider so intently that the barmaids who passed by gave him wide berth and anxious glances. Most everyone else, the folk that did not have the job of tending the tables, didn't notice him at all. Could have stared right at him and not realized he was there. He had ever been the master of shielding his true nature. It was nothing to shield the depth of his burning hatred, the vast scope of his seething power, even from those that should have been sensitive to such things.

He had not expected Schneider though. Had not expected the dry tinder of his hatred to be ignited. His head hurt from it. From the fact that he dare not act on it. That despite all his delusions of power, he could not overwhelm his enemy. Not with this mortal body, at any rate.

But soon he would have another. The pathway had already been paved and it would only be a matter of time.

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath66.htm



	66. Chapter 66

aftermath66

Chapter Sixty-six

Lily was like a puppet dancing to the tune of a demented puppeteer. She moved and spoke and performed not of her own violation. She had no will of her own, except deep down where she was pounding at the walls of her own mind and body that imprisoned her. He invaded her with no regard for anything but his own hunger, plundered her memory to take what he wanted. She had no defenses against him. She was not trained to keep unwanted attentions from within the sanctity of her own mind. He had never done it to her before. He'd never had to. She had always been tractable and subservient. Always the perfect, obedient slave. She'd never had anything to hide, so he'd never had the need to rip her open and take what he wanted. She did now.

So many cherished things. She had no notion what he gleaned from her. She had no way of knowing what he left untouched and what he sifted through. He did it with such contemptible ease that she would hardly have know he was there, if he hadn't wanted her to know. If he hadn't taken pleasure in her active knowledge of the violation. He hated her now. She saw it in his eyes. Hate along with something else. Madness that had not been there before. She feared for her friends, that he would harm them merely because they were close to her. But he seemed to care less about the minstrel's. He made them blithely unaware of his existence, even though they passed him a dozen times.

He blanked a part of her mind, everything but the parts it took to perform -- to dance -- and she did so with all the skills available to her. One of her best performances someone - maybe Dell - said. Yoko appeared out of the crowd to catch at her arm, mouthing words of concern. She stared, hopeless and speechless, until something took over her mouth and words that were not her own spouted out. She spun away and left Yoko looking surprised and hurt. Went upstairs where it was dark and quiet and just collapsed into her blankets as if her strings had been cut.

She lay there, the only control she had over her body, the tears that leaked from the corner of her eyes. She had to stop this. She had to find some way to break out of this manipulation. She had to warn Kall-Su. She had to do something -- but gods how could she break free from the Master?

He came upstairs not long after her. She heard his slow passage. He was so changed. So old looking now. How had a man who looked no more than forty aged so quickly in so short a time? He crouched over her, not touching her, breathing hard and furious.

"He was here. Did you see him? That demonspawn. And that little trollop, Yoko. She'll pay for betraying me when I kill him. Do you know what I offered her? That bitch? She chose him!! She chose him over the prophet to the one god. I'll see her burn in hell. But not before he goes first. "

He wasn't talking to her really. He was rambling, demented and irate. Fine. Let him focus on his hatred of Schneider and Yoko. Let him forget the other things. But no --

"Its almost that time, isn't it, girl? When you'll sneak out to meet him. When all that's on your mind is fornication -- you dirty little whore." A sly smile spread over his lined face. He bent close. "Perhaps if you play your part well, I'll reward you. When I possess that body you lust after, I'll come to you and give you one last taste of sin before I send you to hell with the rest of my enemies. You can look into those beautiful eyes and imagine its him. But it won't be."

He laughed and she couldn't even get out the sob of terror that lodged beneath her heart.

Kall-Su had not been able to concentrate since Schneider had asked him if he wanted to go and see Lily sing. It had been a malicious request at best. Schneider was prodding for reaction and how he had gotten on the scent to begin with was mystifying. Schneider had the habit of seeming indifference, which generally hid a too keen perception. One had to be careful around him, lest he shake all the secrets from the rafters like so much dust.

He couldn't read the book anymore, all he was doing was staring at the same page, glossing over words that didn't make sense. He closed it and put it away. He went downstairs to the hall where a few folk had gathered after dinner to while away the time. Gara and Arshes Nei were at the end of the high table, engrossed in conversation regarding men of hers and his left in the eastern mountains. Of the logistics of traveling back, of the best route from here. Of supplies and mounts and the disposition of the southern alliance at their reappearance.

It was depressing, the talk of their exodus. He had never particularly striven after their company, even when they had been campaigning together. He had always distanced himself from getting to close, cleaving dearly to the reputation he had made for himself as Ice Lord. Ruthless and cold and unapproachable. The only regard he had ever actively sought was Schneider's and that had been a fickle regard at best. It was better now. A boundary had been crossed -- he didn't know where exactly -- that had changed things. Aside from that one terrible month, this winter had been -- agreeable. The castle was warmer than it had ever been and that had nothing to do with the addition of rugs and tapestries and cushions for all the benches.

He would miss Gara's bluster and unrefined good cheer. He would even miss Arshes with her cold sarcasm and her disdain which always had the flavor of sibling rivalry. He didn't want to think about Schneider's plans and he very badly did not want to think about the intangible thing that pulled Lily away and what that would mean when it happened.

He must have looked disconsolate, because Gara looked up at him and frowned and asked what was wrong. He shook his head, denying that anything was. Pushing maudlin thoughts away.

"When do you think you'll leave?" he asked to detour the subject.

"Next few weeks maybe. Some of my men are staying. A few of them have made attachments to local girls. I encouraged them not to break them if they're serious."

"They'll find places in my service." Kall promised.

"I'd stay if I thought this bandit thing was going to heat up, but it looks like its going to stew for a long while. No reason to sit around and wait for them to creep down out of the tundra. Not that you can't handle it by yourself, but I wouldn't have minded sinking my teeth into it. They got my ire up with that stunt, let me tell you."

"Of course." He agreed tonelessly.

Gara kept frowning at him. "If you need my services you just call, you know that."

He inclined his head, wanting to drift away outside, maybe walk about the gardens that were beginning to come into early summer growth. It would be as good a means as any to while away the time until he could go and meet Lily.

The stars were out in blatant brilliance. It was a fine, quiet night. Any activity within the yard that surrounded the castle was centered either about the main gates where the barracks and stables were located or around the kitchen, which seemed to never completely shut down. There were so few folk who cared about the gardens. He hardly did, except for an occasional place out of doors to find solitude. He supposed there was a gardener on staff, for the hedges had been trimmed and the weeds trimmed on regular basis. Someone had to be doing it. It struck him as odd, to think that he had people working for him and he didn't even know what jobs they did, much less their faces. He barely took the interest to remember the faces of the main castle staff. He was better with the faces of the men at arms, but only those that had been with him for years. He had become over time, isolated and reclusive, spending far more time fending off alliances than building them. Tonight's morose musings on upcoming departures only drove home how very isolated a world he had made for himself. It was safe though. So much safer not to feel, than to feel and be hurt when the things he became attached to went away. And they always did.

Time to seek Lily. He fastened the buttons of the loose, silken house jacket, ever articulate in the face he presented the world. He left the grounds, silent as a whisper and with none the wiser. Set foot to ground in the circle beyond the inn where she stayed. There was a stable on one side and a series of shops, closed for the night around the others. In the center a low stone fountain that had presumably not worked for years dominated the circle. The stable used it to water its charges. The stars lit the cobbles fairly well, but there were still shadows clinging to the buildings.

Whether she wanted to or not, he would press her for an answer to the question of whether she would stay or go, tonight. It was too much of a burning need for him to know to let it lie any longer.

He did not see her immediately after he'd landed. He searched the shadows for her, taking a few steps into the circle towards the fountain. She might have been delayed in the tavern. The business might have been so good that the tavern owner prolonged his hours and insisted the minstrels play longer.

But then he saw her. She stepped out of the shadows of a furrier's shop. Slim and graceful, she moved into the starlight and stood staring at him across the distance of the circle. The fountain was between them. He moved around it, since she had stopped. She held herself stiffly, her head high, her dark eyes shadows that the starlight could not penetrate.

Something was wrong, he thought and on the heels of that, the presumption that she had made her choice, that she had decided finally that she would not stay here. He faltered, not particularly eager to confirm that suspicion.

"Lily?" he asked, uncertainly, because she made no move to speak or step closer to him. "Are you all right?"

A breath. Two and he thought her hands were trembling. "Yes. I'm fine." She said finally, haltingly. Something glinted in the fey light. A tear that gathered at the corner of her eye and threatened to spill. Concerned, he stepped forward.

Movement caught his eye. The tapping of a wooden cane upon cobblestone. An old man moved out of the shadows. Thin and gray haired, face so gouged by lines that it was a latticework of shadow. He stopped behind Lily, laid one hand upon her shoulder under the fall of her dark hair. A familiar touch. Kall-Su stared, confused. He knew her minstrel friends by sight, but not this old man. The old man leaned and seemed to whisper something in her ear. She did not flinch from it, or take her eyes from Kall.

He was affronted by it. By this unexpected intrusion that she allowed. By the whisper that spoke of secrets shared that he was on the outside of. If she was playing some game, it was beyond him.

"Lily, what is this? Who is this?"

The old man lifted his eyes and the starlight revealed a sharp, predatory gaze. "Don't you remember me, Kall-Su?"

He blinked, the eyes, the smooth sibilance of the voice bringing simultaneous blows of recognition. The Prophet.

Before he had even drawn a shocked breath he was throwing up shields and something was slamming against them. No magic that even tickled the air in the circle, but the insidious mental kind of assault that the Prophet was so good at. No time to think how he had gotten here. How he had entwined Lily in his web. He could not let the pounding of his heart, or the fear that he couldn't quite dam, distract him. Something slipped past his mental shields as if they were water, and visions of darkness and torment blinded him. He reeled, staggered back and felt the stone of the fountain against his thighs.

No. Force it out. Don't crumble. Oh, please, please don't crumble. He summoned power, mouthed the desperate words to a spell and the energy crackled in the air around him.

"It will kill her before it kills me, boy." Those hated lips sneered. Those skeletal hands tightened around Lily and she stood passively, numbly in the grasp. He hadn't even thought, in his panic. He would have cast that spell and obliterated her and it probably would not have been enough to take out the Prophet.

He felt the magic that ensnared her now. There was no effort to hide it. The same mind magic that was trying to worm its way inside his head. Familiar, crawling fingers that he loathed. He tried to shake them off, tried to regain a portion of control.

"Let her go." He hissed, voice low and trembling. Trying to think of something to do that would separate her from him. He didn't trust his own ability to deal with this. To his core he was shaken and fear and magic did not always make stable bedfellows. Summon Schneider, then. Anyway he could. A blast of power would do it. Something loud enough to alert anyone magic sensitive that something was afoot.

"I don't want her." The Prophet said.

Kall-Su knew that. He pulled the power that had dissipated back down around him. Angelo shook his head.

"She'll die. And it will be by your hand. I'll channel any energy that is released in this circle through her, whether it be your spell or mine, she'll be the conduit. There'll be nothing left of simple mortal flesh to revive."

It was possible, since he was in contact with her that he could do such a thing. He looked at her face. Her eyes had a bit more life to them now. Frantic and huge. Do it. She mouthed the words. Then, struggling to break free of the will that held her she whispered.

"Do it, Kall."

"She'll die for you. How noble." Angelo sneered. "Will you kill her? Or shall I?"

Something static and lethal gathered about Angelo and Lily. She stiffened, as magic induced pain seared her nerves.

"No." Kall-Su cried.

"Drop the shields, then. They're stronger than I remembered. You impress me."

"No." Lily was shaking her head. Tears streamed down her cheeks. "Please no."

He needed her gone from here. He needed her not to be a barrier between him and the Prophet. Distract the vile creature then. He knew the best way to do that. He knew very well, what passions drove this man. He bowed his head in capitulation, let his shields drop, one by one, shuddering in horror that he was doing it at all.

Not a second was wasted. The Prophet slammed into him with all his considerable mental abilities. Flooded his mind with all the things he had used to shatter him months before, found all the weaknesses and used them to rip him asunder. He screamed, folding to his knees, doubling over and clutching at his head as if it might explode. Vaguely he heard Lily scream with him. Vaguely he thought he saw Angelo let her go and take a step towards him. He flung out shields unexpectedly, putting them not on himself, but on her. He threw every bit of power his scattered wits could find onto that protection, breaking the hold the Prophet had over her.

Angelo realized it. Hissed in irritation and threw out a hand to cast a spell on her.

"Run." Kall-Su screamed at her, keeping those shields upon her and when she hesitated, staring at him as if she were thinking about stubbornly refusing to flee, he flung out his own arm and summoned a wind that picked her up bodily and flung her out of the circle and tumbled her none too gently on the street beyond it. He started to bring something more dangerous down upon Angelo, but the man lashed out with the end of his staff and caught him on the side of the head with it. That was as disorienting as the mental violation. He curled on his side on the cobblestones, blood leaking from his ear, concentrating on keeping up the protections on Lily while the pain thrummed noisily inside his head.

The air hummed with the release of a spell. The heat of it made the night air shimmer. A high impact fireball spell. He heard her scream even before it hit her. Felt it impact shields of his making and felt them shudder. If it got through she wouldn't have the magical reserves to recover. Please, please let the shields hold. He didn't know whether they did or did not. Angelo turned back to him, muttering curses. The air shimmered and seemed to tear behind the Prophet. The man stepped towards him, cane raised as if to strike. Kall drew in a hissed breath and called down the quickest, easiest strike he could. A fist of energy formed in the air above their heads and slammed down towards the Prophet. But the man wasn't there. The rip in space slipped forward and swallowed him a moment before it arched down and consumed Kall-Su.

The blast hit the cobbles and blasted out a pit as wide as a man and half as deep. Somewhere a dog barked at the disturbance. No one was in the circle to hear it.

Lily slammed into the corner of a building, screaming as a comet of fire obliterated her. She held up her hands, squeezing her eyes shut, expecting burning, horrible pain and discovering nothing but a warmth that was uncomfortable but not unbearable. She fell to her knees as it dissipated, scrambling mindlessly to the dark cover of an alley, not at the moment thinking of anything but escape. She sat there, huddled against piles of trash from the tavern, sobbing, chest hurting from a terror that had resided there for too long. But her mind, even numb with fear, was hers again.

There was a loud crack of impact from outside the ally, then silence. Profound silence. She lowered her head into her hands, pulling at her hair in misery. What had she, in her weakness, wrought? The fool. The great fool, to have sacrificed himself for her. She climbed unsteadily to her feet and staggered out of the alley, pausing cautiously at the corner to see if Angelo still waited to destroy her. But he wasn't there. And Kall-Su wasn't. There was only a crater beyond the fountain, from which smoke trailed lazily upwards.

Oh, gods, gods, no. She stood swaying, tears streaming down her face. Devastation hit her like a fist. She stumbled against a wall from it. She did not doubt, for one second that the Master could and would do what he had promised. He was so powerful. So invasive and he had already broken Kall-Su once. Had already been on the verge of taking what he wanted. She screamed into the night, a wail of desperation and denial. Of loss, because Lily could not conceive of how it could be stopped.

"I said no." Yoko primly crossed her arms and searched about for her sewing, which sat in a basket by the fire. She was being unreasonable. Schneider was becoming irritated with her.

"You were the one that wanted to go there, tonight." He said sulkily. "Don't blame me if things didn't turn out like you wanted."

"I'm not. I'm just not in the mood tonight." She turned irate amber eyes towards him, ready to spar. She said something else, but he hardly caught it, attention drawn elsewhere.

The skin on the back of his hands tingled. There was the thrumming awareness of a fair amount of energy being released and not far away. So close in fact that he could almost sense the heat of it. A fire spell. A high impact, focused fireball spell. Arshes was the only wizard in the city other than himself, capable of that particular spell, but he knew the flavor of her magic as well as he knew his own, and it didn't taste of her. But it was vaguely familiar. Then on the heels of the first a second, non-elemental strike that boomed through the city like thunder. The windows rattled. Yoko jumped up, startled.

"Damnit." He hissed. He did know the signature of that casting. The sure premonition of disaster reared up within him. That first spell. That first spell -- he had felt its aroma before. He whipped out a hand and the window, along with the wall around it exploded outwards. Her was out of it before the glass and stone had even hit the ground. Flying low over the city, homing in on the dissipating pulse of energies.

Nothing more. Not a single whisper of magic. But the impact zone still radiated it. Not a block down from the very tavern he and Yoko had been earlier that evening People crowded the street in confusion. The wall of a building smoldered, burnt and charred. Beyond that was a cul-de-sac with a blasted out crater in its center. Water leaked over the cobblestones, the wall of a large fountain ruptured and spilling all its contents. The crater was already a quarter full of dark water. Other than that, it was empty, people only just starting to creep closer to see what had happened.

"Where the hell are you?" He touched ground, creating a powerful witchlight that chased the shadows away. It hovered over his head like a thing alive and the folk who had been edging closer to the circle gasped and surged backwards. Except for one figure, who broke though the bewildered people and rushed headlong towards him. He almost blasted her backwards out of hand, high strung and having damned, damned unnerving suspicions about that first spell. But he recognized her. Recognized the lingering traces of magic upon her. Familiar benign magic.

She almost slammed into him, slipping on the wet cobblestones, clutched at the sleeve of his shirt with desperate fingers. She was crying and hyperventilating so badly that he could hardly interpret her babbling.

"G--ggods! Y-y-you've g-g-ot to h-help him. I-it's m-m-my fault. My fault. I c-c-ouldn't s-stop it."

He caught hold of her shoulders hard enough to hurt and shook her. Her head snapped back and forth like a dolls. She kept trying frantically to grab at him. "What happened?" he demanded. "Tell me what happened?"

"M-m-master." She got out and seemed to shrivel in upon herself with that proclamation. He stared at her. Pushed her away and cursed. He'd know it. He'd damn well known that spell aura.

"Where the fuck is Kall?" He stabbed a finger at her, accusing her, ready to tear her apart if she had been responsible for something happening to him.

"I don't know." She whimpered. "Gone. Gone."

He took a threatening step towards her. "What do you mean it was your fault?"

"Darshe -- no." Arshes came up behind him. He hadn't even realized she'd arrived. She had a naked sword in her hands and was half dressed at best. "She wouldn't have hurt him. Give her a chance to explain."

He glared at her interference. It was hard to back down, the rage and the dread had his blood at the boiling point. The girl was cowering, looking miserable and guilty. Arshes laid a hand on his arm, carefully. He took a breath and backed up a step to distance himself. Arshes stepped around the edge of the crater, bent down nest to the girl and asked in a low, gentle voice.

"Calm down, Lily. Hysterics will gain us nothing. Breath. And tell us what happened?"

[NEXT][1]

   [1]: aftermath67.htm



	67. Chapter 67

aftermath67

Chapter Sixty-seven

Translocating was not a magic Kall-Su thought possible. Not by any creature living. Not without exacting and time consuming spellcraft and effort at any rate. He remembered dimly reading something about slyphs - beings long extinct -- being able to flee through a hole in space when threatened. An entirely defensive mechanism and not one expected from a human sorcerer. He hadn't even been certain that's what had happened until the disorientation of the passage left him and he discovered he wasn't lying on the cobblestones of the cul-de-sac anymore. It was like being picked up by the collar and jerked bodily through a gravity heavy space that compressed a body and dizzied a mind. Blackness and stunning lights at the same time. Cold and warmth that ate into bones -- A static scream that could be heard inside his head, but not outside it.

Then it was gone and so was the star speckled sky, the nighttime sounds of Sta-Veron and the shadowed bulk of the city. All of it was just vanished and he was plunged into caliginous blackness. He was on a surface so smooth and flat it had to be metal. It was cool and dry -- bone dry, as if coated with a film of fine dust. A sound. A scuffle of something very close by and Kall scrambled backwards, ignoring the ringing in his ears, and the wave after wave of chaotic images that pulsed through his head. His back hit a wall close by. He flung out an arm, summoning a witch light. It was hard coming. He felt the magic stir at his invocation, but it was reluctant to do what he wished. It felt -- frightened -- almost.

But it came anyway -- if he couldn't summon a simple witchlight, then he was truly lost, and the cold bluish light illuminated a section of plain, unadorned hallway. Metal walls. Lines cut so straight and precise, so surgical in their design that it seemed no man's hand had made them. There was a low, vibrating hum that came from somewhere, that permeated the floor and the walls and the very air. Not magic. Not anything he had felt before, but it hinted at power.

A movement from the shadow of the hall, which seemed to go on forever and Angelo stepped forward, staff raised as if he intended to strike Kall with it again. Six steps away. Kall hissed out the words of a spell, a summoning spell that would set an ice elemental loose upon the Prophet. The man would probably beat it back, since Kall didn't have time to cast a more powerful spell, but it would give him the moment he needed to get his head together. He spoke the last word of the summons and nothing happened. No trace of the elemental creature that had served him very well in the past. Silence save for the soft slap of Angelo's boots on the floor.

He gaped, thinking, could this be the place without windows? Elemental's wouldn't pass the wards when he'd tried to summon them before. The staff came crashing down, Angelo's face a twisted mask of rage-victory- maniacal pleasure, behind it. Kall-Su held up an arm and blocked it, saved his skull from the impact and with a sickening crack, felt his arm go numb instead. A second later, pain blazed and he cried out, clutching the member close to his body, scrambling backwards, away from the Prophet.

Angelo laughed. A little mad. A little unsteady. Not the very smooth, very in control man he'd been before. "Magic doesn't like it down here. The things here chase it away. But I know magics that aren't afraid. They're not magics at all. I used to think it was a gift given to me by God, but now I think something darker bestowed it upon me. I ruled the souls of half the old world by virtue of them. They bowed to me. They worshipped me as the spokesman of God. Trusting fools! Can you feel it the fingers of it in your head, my pretty sinner?"

He did feel them. Oh, god, god, they crept inside his head like snakes, seeking any slight entry and forcing their way past, writhing and convulsing their sinuous bodies until they widened the gaps of defense. It was repulsive. The serpents had been there before, freely slithering inside his head, let in by hopelessness and pain. They'd brought with them visions of guilt and madness that he still felt the lingering traces of. They told him now to let go, to stop fighting, that there was no prospect of beating Angelo here, in the heart of his lair. His secret place. The place down below, where the Prophet had never let anyone trespass. Where Lily had warned him away from desperately so long ago, when he'd still had the will to seek escape. Kall shut his eyes, clutching his head and screamed out the words to a spell, gathering power with all his desperate will to feed it.

An energy blast the width of the hall answered. It was weaker than it might have been, considering all the power he poured into it. It lit the hall like a wash of lightening, swallowing Angelo, blasting him backwards. Kall _knew_ he wasn't down. Felt it in the shimmering response of shields, in the insistence of the invasion inside his thoughts. He climbed to his feet, using the wall as support -- his arm throbbed torturously, broken perhaps, and retreated down the hall into shadow, his witchlight a feeble support at best.

No wards down here. They would have repelled that energy blast and that had not happened. So what was making magic so hard? He couldn't think. He tried to insert mental blockades to stop the inward seepage. What should have been simple for a mind trained in the highest sorcery, he was finding impossible. He should have been able to protect himself from this assault. He should have been able to at least shut out the worst of it, but it had him staggering, vision tunneling. With distance it became more bearable, though. He could focus again.

The hall went on forever. There were indention's where smooth, handelless doors were, faded, peeling numerical symbols stenciled on the walls next to them. Everything was made of the same metal. Blue gray and seamless. No bolts, no welded seams. Like something from the old world. Like something seen within the wreckage's of shattered cities, inside the shells of buildings that had seen less damage than the rest. But nothing in those graveyards had ever been this unscathed by the Final Destruction. Nothing had ever been this whole. Occasionally there were strips of light along the wall near the floor which still faintly glowed. Occasionally some of the doors stood open and inside those dark rooms were things from another time. Dust coated memorials.

What was this place where Angelo had built his fortress atop? Kall stretched out his senses, and felt the weight of a world resting above him. He could not even begin to feel the air above the stone and rock and earth.

There was an intersection ahead. He took a turn without pausing to think, rushing into darkness with the witchlight threatening to abandon him at any moment. He could not hear sounds of pursuit, but he knew Angelo was there. Waiting for the moment to strike.

He had not been prepared for this. He had blocked all possibility of Angelo's existence out of his mind. Easier to convince himself the man was dead than think the creature was out there waiting to strike. Easier to let himself slide into the mundane reality of Sta-Veron and the unexpected discovery of Lily and all she represented than prepare himself for this. Fool. He should have known. He should never had let his guard down. Had he ever even built it back up? So here he was now, with a madman who knew the byways of his mind better than he did, who wanted his magic and his body to house it and would destroy[][1] his soul to get it. And then he would try to destroy everything he loved once he had it.

He paused and put his back against the wall to catch his breath. The featureless facade of a door was next to him. A panel beside it with its faceplate hanging by exposed wires. The humm was an undertone that drifted through this place like a ghost.

A vision slammed into him.

Lights and bright halls. Men and women striding purposefully along, all in similar cut clothing. Uniforms with shining brass buttons and various marks of rank. A few others among them in more casual, civilian clothing, all of them looking as if they had great business to conduct. The world outside, hundreds and hundreds of feet above flared with nuclear explosions. With the far more devastating biological menace that was ---- Ansasla. Yet these people were safe from it. Shielded while the rest of the world writhed in torment. A thousand people in this place. Miles of bunkered hallways and stored supplies. Nuclear power beneath them that would feed life into those halls for a millennia. A place of safety for a thousand souls that would support them and their offspring for as long as it took for the world to regain its composure. Only the world never had. Not the way it used to be and they weren't alone down here, for they had invited a serpent into safety among them. He walked down the hall in the company of privileged men and decorated soldiers, his white robes and gold trimmed skull cap making him seem angelic and holy. An old man, white haired and frail, with kind eyes and a benevolent smile. The oldest man here. He wouldn't live to see the day when the shielded bunker doors were opened to let man once more walk the upper earth. He hadn't the strength to endure so many years. Not of his own, at any rate.

Kall-Su drew back against the wall as the insubstantial figures passed, the old man staring blindly through him, but the others -- the soldiers and the officers and the aides and the priestly attendants that trailed the old man -- their eyes found him. Looked at him as they walked with longing and dread. As if they recognized him or wanted something of him.

The darkness came tumbling back, taking the witchlight with it. Kall remained against the wall, bracing his legs to keep from sliding down it. Beginning to shake from reaction. Had Angelo slipped that into his head or had it come from something else?

He thought he knew what this was now. One of those places where the survivors had hidden, before they had come out, years later and declared an end to the technology that had ruined their world. Most of those places had been destroyed and all they represented along with them. Most of those places were whispered legends, but they were known. How could there be one left that still had power fueling it, technology humming within it that repelled magic as surely as the wards had protected the fortress that had resided above it?

He called the witchlight back and it almost hurt this time, it was so much of an effort. The magic did not wish to function here. He set off again, a little more careful of his pace, the arm sending screaming jolts of pain up past his shoulder. It was enough to take his mind from the constant outside pressure worrying at him. He didn't think he had a whisper of a chance at healing it. Not if it took so much effort just to summon a witchlight.

What had happened to Lily? Please let her be alive. Angelo hadn't the time to cast anything else at her. He'd gone through the hole in space before Kall-Su had been entrapped by it. Grant her enough sense to go find Schneider and tell him what had happened. Schneider would know something was wrong. He would have picked up on the cast spells. It was just a matter of him knowing the specifics so he could do something about it. Do what? Cast another of his incredibly inventive witchcraft spells? No likely, at least not for another cycle of the moon. He needed a full moon, if Kall recalled Schneider's scribbled notes correctly and that had been two nights past. Not another one for a month. No help there. They still didn't even know where this place was, other than the assumption that it was somewhere in the mid-western mountain range. That covered a lot of ground.

There was a double door just ahead that seemed the crux of three halls. He passed it and it slid open as if by ghost hands. He scooted back a few steps, managing to avoid a yelp of surprise. A wash of cool, oddly scented air flowed out at him. He almost expected Angelo, since the door had apparently opened by magic, but there was no movement and no attack. Curiosity got the better of him and he stepped forward, slipping quickly and cautiously through the animate doors. His light seeped into the room. Large chamber, filled with lines of tables and chairs. A eating hall perhaps. The tables all had things lying upon them. Covered oblong shapes. Hundreds and hundreds of them. There were more piled along the walls haphazardly, as if someone had gotten tired to stacking them neatly and decided to drop them with no respect to order. He stepped on something brittle and it crunched under his boot. He looked down. Clutching hand flung out on the floor, flesh eaten away by time, bone gone yellow from the same culprit, the rotten remnants of clothing still clinging like spider web to the frame of a body.

He carefully stepped back, suddenly wary of what he would see if he looked to closely to all those other shapes in the darkness. A thousand people down here when this place was alive. How many skeletal corpses in this room?

Something brushed at his arm like a whispered caress and another vision blared behind his eyes.

People were dying. It had gotten in, somehow. The infection -- the germ released by Ansasla had somehow slipped in past all the safeguards and it was eating them up from within. It went through them like death waving his scythe in a field of wheat. They fell, with no regard to rank or placement. It even struck the holy. But the old man, in his dying moments, struck out in desperation, using the innate power of his mind, and the scant power given him by what he thought was the messenger of his god and discovered a way to prolong his existence. There was a man beside him, sick and dying, but not so far along as the old man, broken with the sure knowledge of impending death. A hopeless man with no reason to fight, when a determinedly righteous one invaded his mind, crushed his soul and drew out the essence of his life. The old man left his body and found himself a new one. Not healthy by any means, but buffered by the combined life-force of two beings. He was like a vampire feeding on the weak. He was so desperate for existence that he threw away whatever compassion he held for the sanctity of life. They were all dying anyway. What did it matter?

They never knew what hit them. They never knew the name of the second plague that ate away at their resources. He went through them all, because every body he took weakened and had to be disposed of. He took the healthiest if he could. He tore apart their unguarded mundane minds and reaped the benefits of their bodies. And somewhere along the way he gained enough power to purge himself of the virus and he went out into the world. But he left behind a warren full of ghosts, a maze of souls that he'd raped and torn from their hosts all in the name of a god whom he thought had preordained his survival over the survival of all others.

A filmy haze shifted at the corner of his vision. He couldn't be sure it wasn't part of the hallucination. He turned his head, trying to follow it, and there was another wisp further into the room. A pale luminescence that hovered like fog over the tables piled with bones. Almost it seemed to light the room. But it was no fog. It was nothing natural that clung with desperate fervor to the remains of men and women dead four hundred years. With growing dread he felt the forlorn, tormented cries of murdered masses. Heard the whispers -- the wind blowing through a forest of dry leaves -- of countless voices crying to be avenged.

It wasn't a mere twenty some bodies Angelo had taken over the centuries. It was hundreds and hundreds and the evidence lay here, a vile collection of bones and the whisper of ghosts who had no power to avenge themselves.

"Oh god." Kall-Su said very softly, taking a step backwards in horror.

"There is no god." Angelo whispered from behind him.

He whirled, backpedaling in shock, holding his hands to his ears uselessly as what had been ghostly whispers turned into a banshee wail of allegation and fury. The filmy presenses swirled about the chamber like a hive of angry wasps. The pulsing lights strobed in his eyes. Angelo didn't seem to see it. He stared with maddening intensity at Kall-Su, nothing but the sickening assurance of victory in his eyes.

"Can't you see them?" Kall cried, panicked, backing away steadily into the graveyard of the Prophet's making.

"What? These old bones?" The old Angelo smile flickered into place. The Missionary's smile. "They gave their lives for the good." He held out a hand. "Don't fight me, boy. Its inevitable."

Something whipped past Kall's head and he ducked, staring after it. The Prophet's gaze followed his, his eyes narrowing as if he thought some joke were being played upon him. A tick began in his cheek. His gaze flickered about the room uncertainly.

"Don't try and distract me." He hissed.

Kall almost laughed, aborted it with a strangled sound and accused. "You killed them. They _trusted_ you and you fed off them."

Angelo's eyes widened. His lips pulled back in a snarl of utter rage. "Shut up! Shut up!"

Kall felt the power gather and had just enough time to form a haphazard shield. A high impact energy spell hit him, battered him backwards and ate at his shields. The dry rotted canvas that covered the remains on the tables went up in flames. Bones burned. Another blast hit him and he slammed backwards into a table, overturning it, falling in a shower of brittle bones. Something snapped. Fear, revulsion, desperation, anger all came to a head and he pulled power recklessly, siphoning inner reserves when outside magics were sluggish to respond. He bombarded Angelo with an ice spell. A hurricane hammer of cold powered energy that blew bones and tables against the walls in its path to envelope the Prophet. The Prophet in his mad rage had not even had a shield up. He was that sure of his dominance. It blasted him back, through the open doors and against the hallway wall. Red blood spattered the frost covered wall. Angelo slumped to the floor, his shoulder a bloody mess, his left arm just gone. Ice rimmed his hair and brows, crusted on his robes.

He didn't move. There was no hint of breath frosting the air.

Kall's did. Quick and hard and he crouched there, panting. The power for another strike hung in the air around him, waiting to be directed. He pushed himself up, stood there swaying, with bones about his feet. Bones all around.

_You -- little -- bastard --_

It clamored inside his head. Burning tendrils of pain lashed behind his eyes. He cried out, lost the tenuous hold on the power he'd gathered and it vanished as if it were running for its life.

_You think I can't destroy you?_ It seared, like a brand into flesh, only it was mental passages that were being tormented -- destroyed. He felt gashes ripped inside his head. He doubled over, trying to fight it off. Tasted blood in his mouth and felt it trickling down his lips, running from his nose.

He threw out a frail blast of energy force, and it hurt -- god it hurt so bad to direct that feeble bit of power. Only Angelo wasn't where he had been. There was nothing there but a blood splattered wall. He couldn't see the ghosts anymore. Either they had fled, chased away by the magic, or he just couldn't see them anymore with the agony in his head. He whipped his head around, more interested in finding Angelo than the ghosts. The room was dark now. Not even the witchlight, which had dissipated at some point during the exchange.

The pain sliced into him again, and he screamed, crumpling back into the bones. This time he knew it was more than mere pain -- there was damage done. There was a wrongness in his senses, in the natural pattern of things.

_Do you think I don't know the byways of your mind, Kall-Su? Do you think I didn't map out the channels of your demon spawned power? Do you think I can't burn you out, if I want? Do you think I haven't done it in the past when the sinner I needed was too stubborn to give in without destroying the magic that sustained them? So much trouble and time to heal, but I'm a master of the mind, am I not? And I'll have all the time in the world once I have your body to heal what I destroy in order to take it._

The voice was inside his head, like the ghost voices, but it brought with it fire and suffering. He knew what was wrong now. It was Angelo wrecking the pathways that allowed power to flow. The channels that so very few people had, that allowed them to be sensitive to magic. He knew of wizards who rashly used more power than they were capable of channeling, who burned out their own abilities, but he had never known it possible to wreck that same circuitry from the outside. Yet that's what it felt like was happening. It felt like open, raw wounds were being gouged inside his mind.

It hurt. It hurt worse than any torture Angelo had subjected him to. It blinded him to everything but the white searing destruction. He couldn't fight it, because Angelo knew the ways past his mental barriers. Had probably planted pathways past before Schneider had ever gotten him out. He stretched out his cringing, wounded mental voice and desperately tried a summons. Find an elemental bold enough to venture down here despite the humm of technology. Something that didn't require power from him, other than in the calling. Something that would attack of its own violation and under its own strength. He couldn't grasp hold of one. His summon spells fell on deaf, or stridently preoccupied ears. Anything then. Draw in anything, even the little ones who owed no fealty to him and let them run rampart down here long enough to distract Angelo. But the little ones were rebuffed by the engines that ran this place. But something else came sniffing, curious of his desperation, curious of the strange power of this bunker. Not afraid of technology, because it was not a thing that had ever been threatened by it. It held some hint of familiarity. Senses fading, Kall held onto the faint recollection of the elemental he had perceived the morning after he and Lily had first slept together. The very old, very powerful presence that had come on the tails of all the younger, more gleeful elementals. It seeped down now, mindless of the earth that sat between sky and this place, a vastly, ominously ancient force that he clutched at with failing mental fingers and implored succor of.

He didn't even try to command it. Did not begin to think, even under better circumstances that he could bring it to heel by force. It delved into him, who had called it, with much the same force that Angelo was invading him, but with less finesse and a trailing residue of much, much more power. It grasped hold of the pain and the fear and the hatred towards this place and the man who had made it his liar. It was not used to human emotion. It had never known the taste of a human mind. What he had seen of it, he realized in some astonishment, had only been the tip of the proverbial iceberg. It was beyond fathoming the extent of its power. Ancient, ancient elemental out of the frozen northern poles that even the nomads did not venture. And despite all that, it latched onto his _fear/hatred/destroy_ -- took it into itself and went wild.

Angelo sensed it as it began to release its energies. He called down a massive fire attack to drive away an ice elemental, and the fire sputtered and was lost in a growing maelstrom of wind and blowing ice. The floor began to freeze over, ice forming and growing, thicker and thicker until it started to creep over the scattered bones, to encase the tables and chairs, to seep up the walls and coat the ceiling. Angelo screamed in fury, yanking his attention away from Kall-Su, trying to master the elemental that was in the midst of throwing a mammoth tantrum. And the thing recognized the object of the fear/hate and descended upon him.

Half a scream got out, before the ice swarmed over his body. Kall hadn't even realized where he was before that physical scream alerted him to the position. And then all he saw was the swiftly thickening ice and the winds battering the indistinct shape so forcefully that pieces of it began to chip away, until the whole of it was battered down to nothing. Nothing but pieces of frozen ice and blood and bone that mixed in with all the others that were flying about the room.

And it didn't stop. It circled outwards, the ice eating into the walls and bones of the bunker itself. Taking over room by room, level by level of a place vast enough to have housed a thousand people. It climbed over the generators and the great engines that ran this place and they ground to a halt. It seeped up through the earth and went mad with the currents of air to feed it. It grew. Concentrically it devoured the earth, wider and wider. Trees were frozen solid in moments, toppling at their own weight. Animals were caught[][2] unawares and frozen in motion. It began to create a tundra all of its own in the mountains of the west.

Kall felt its hunger, its madness. Felt the ever growing pattern of its destruction and could do nothing. All he could do was sit untouched by a thing that was systematically destroying everything in its path. The center of the storm that still raged in the death chamber. Kneeling there, miserable and hurting, with a cold so violent that even he was effected by it. He wrapped his arms about himself, not quite believing the Prophet was gone. But there was no new pain inflicted inside his head, just the burning sensation of the old; the throbbing of mangled power channels. He tried to call the elemental back, desperate to halt its destruction, even though the effort cost him dearly. It did not respond, utterly beyond his control and he thought he might have worsened the damage inside his head. He sobbed helplessly, tears sliding past his lashes. They froze on his cheeks. His clothing was stiff with ice. It frosted his hair. His flesh might be immune to it, but at the rate the ice was growing down here, it wouldn't matter, he'd been encased within anyway.

[NEXT][3]

   [1]: kallbunker.htm
   [2]: blizzard.htm
   [3]: aftermath68.htm



	68. Chapter 68

aftermath68

Chapter Sixty-eight

Lily did not recall being brought to the castle. She did not recall what conversation, if any she'd had with Schneider and Lady Nei on the night-dark street beyond the tavern. It was all a blur of hazed memories and confused, terrified sensations. People moved around her, spoke in hushed voices about her, or about the events of the night, or about gods knew what else and she couldn't find it in herself to gather an interest for it. She sat curled in a chair with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, shivering, eyes huge and blank, reliving over and over those last terrible, helpless moments. She could not get out of the loop. The recollection of her own powerless body moving forward, speaking not of its own accord, beckoning him closer by her very oddness. The look on his face when he'd recognized the Master. The utter shock. Fear. Even a little betrayal to see her standing passively in the monster's employ. Magic had happened, most of which she was blatantly unaware of, and then she was free. By then it was too late. He forced her away, she knew very well it had been him and not the master. And when she had the nerve to scramble back -- there was nothing. Nothing but the sibilant promises the master had made. Nothing but the overwhelming anguish and dread certainty that if she saw Kall-Su again, it wouldn't be him. It would be a fiend wearing his form and that thought was more than she could bear. 

Yoko hovered about her now and then, worried and gently urging her to take hot tea and to eat. She refused the food, but the tea felt good on a throat raw from crying. 

"You could have told me." Yoko said once, soft reprimand. "I could have helped if I'd known."

She didn't respond. She didn't know how Yoko could have helped. Her mind kept circling back to the Master's threats. She couldn't shake the depression that began to shadow her heart. The concrete assurance that there was no hope. She had lived too long under the Master's thumb, under his all controlling influence to assume he would not get what he wanted. 

It was day again -- or perhaps the day after -- she might have sat the morning, afternoon and night in a stupor, lost in her own fearful contemplation. She was so tired her vision swam. Yoko tried to get her to climb into bed. She didn't know whose room this was, it was not the one she had used when she was a servant here. She had not seen Yoko's wizard, or any of his brethren since she had been brought here. They had disappeared with the night and she'd not had the presence of mind to inquire. Yoko might have mentioned it, but Lily did not recall. 

She slept and awoke to the whispering of girls. Two of the upstairs servants at the door to the room, one with a tray in her hands. Both caught in the midst of speculation about her presence. One of them said her name, when they saw she was awake and smiled a little nervously. Not malicious smiles, but curious ones. She wondered what rumor had spread about the castle by now. She didn't know what time it was. Or how much had passed. 

"Has lord Kall-Su come back?" she asked softly, not caring what they thought of that unsubtle question. It blared too persistently in her head not to ask it. They shook their heads, wide eyed.

"Is it true?" One whispered. It was not the Master's appearance or the subsequent disappearance of their lord that they asked about. Lily was silent on that, pushing away covers. She still wore the red skirt she'd performed in. 

"Who's room is this?" It was someone's room, for it had accumulated possessions sitting about that did not collect in the guest rooms. 

"Lady Yoko's." 

Oh. They set the tray down, but she had stopped paying them heed. She was staring out the window, which had the faint light of morning seeping through the leaded glass. Where was he? Was he even still what she knew and loved? A chill swept over her body, so harsh and violent that she bent double, wrapping her arms about herself. Goose pimples rose on her skin, her teeth chattered uncontrollably. A sign, she thought, panicked. A dread sign of death. The coldness of a grave. But he'd never see a grave, at least not his body, that would come back with the Master behind those eyes and it would wreck vengeance upon her. And upon all the others the Master considered enemies. Yoko.

She jumped off the bed, ran down the hall looking for Yoko. Calling her name in desperation. The maids, who had been talking around a bend in the hall looked at her as if she were insane. But, down at the end of that corridor Yoko stuck her head out of a door. Lily ran to her, grabbed her arm with frantic, clutching fingers.

"You've got to hide. He said he'd come back for you. He said he'd kill you."

"Lily. Lily! Who said?" Yoko stared at her wide eyed.

"The Master." Lily wailed. "He'll destroy him first and then he'll come back for us." She started sobbing again. Heartwrenching, hurtful sobs. Gods she hated crying. Yoko wrapped her arms around her, trembling a little.

"Rushie won't let him." She promised. "Rushie will stop him."

"How?" Lily cried. "How can he, if he has all of Kall-Su's power?"

"You underestimate Kall." Yoko whispered, but there was fear under her veil of assurance. 

"You don't know the Master. You don't know how powerful he is."

"I know. I know very well."

"If he comes here it will be too late. We've got to hide."

Yoko held her at arm's length. "I can't hide. If you're right -- if he takes Kall and he gets past Rushie -- then still I can't hide. He killed my baby. He's hurt us so badly -- I'll fight him to my dying breath if I have to, but I'll never give him the satisfaction of seeing me cower."

Lily shook her head, numbly. She could not understand the mindset of sorcerers, of warriors, of people who refused to bend even when the wind would surely break them if they didn't. Kall-Su was the same. She's seen that from the very first. He fought until he shattered and then there wasn't anything to fight with anymore. She loved that stubbornness no matter that it frustrated her. It occurred to her that it was fear of the Master coming back and taking out vengeance upon her that made her insides crawl up and quiver. It was the thought of him doing it in Kall-Su's body; the thought of knowing what she loved was gone, and seeing the reminder of the theft in soulless, blue eyes. She did not ever want to see that face with the Master's evil mind behind it. 

She wished she had Yoko's faith, but she'd only starting believing in something -- in someone -- very recently. She didn't have the practice Yoko did. The only thing she knew how to do was run. Better not knowing, than to face that which would break her heart.

The western mountains shivered. Their evergreen covered spines became weighted with more than dirt and stone and grasping tree roots. Ice sank its claws deep into the skin of the earth and clung there. It spread like disease, stopped on one side by the sea, racing along in the other three directions unhampered. Nothing survived in its path. The vibrant spring lands were decimated, flattened by the ferocity and the weight of snow and ice. Villages were frozen over, people caught unawares trapped in the maelstrom and frozen as surly as the trees and animals caught in its path. It grew, slowly marginally as the width of destruction became wider. Twenty miles from the eye of the storm. Fifty. The ocean didn't freeze but ships as far out as ten miles were caught in the cold fingers of storm, crusted and weighted with ice and drawn under the waves by the sheer added weight. A hundred miles out and it threatened the sea port cities of the south western coast. It had already covered Keladedra and Sethapia and various towns and villages on the plains to the east of the mountains. 

One did not have to be particularly sensitive to magic to sense it. It blared power across the lands like a sieve. From the moment it had begun Schneider had felt it. Two weeks and it hadn't let up. Had grown wilder and more unrestrained. An elemental power gone crazy. It hammered at the senses until one had to consciously try and block it out. Even then it got through. 

He sat at the edge of it now and looked into a swirling panorama of white. Snow and ice driven by galeforce winds that slowly advanced. The land on one side was green and growing and then began a jagged line of white. Horses stomped their hooves in abject terror, equine minds being wiser than human ones and wanting far away from the edge of the storm and as quickly as possible. He stared up into the heights of the storm, drawing breath, brows knit as he tried to pierce the fabric of the thing that drove it. Not one of Kall's spells. Oh, most certainly not a thing to be mastered by any wizard, but something sympathetic to the essence of his magic. A thing most definitely not sympathetic to the essence of his own. 

Arshes' horse shifted up beside his. He couldn't see her face for whipping black hair. He didn't need to. Her worry was clear in the tenseness of her body, in the way he knuckles gripped the reins. They'd ridden hard and fast, the three of them. Using magic to sustain their mounts, using magic to take routes normal riders could never have managed. There was no doubt to their goal. They were drawn to it like moths to a flame. Anyone with a shred of magical sensitivity could have found the center of this disturbance. Anyone who had the strength to survive the storm raging around it. 

"Gods." Arshes said, voice carried away by the winds. It was an adequate statement. They were having to erect shields to protect themselves from the wind and ice now. It was advancing that quickly.

"There's no way we're getting through that." Gara said from behind them. 

"No." Schneider agreed. Not considering how far it was to the center from this the outer rim. The further in it got, the more intense the weather and even though it was slowing along the edges, it showed no hint of stopping. And since none of them had a chance in hell of reasoning with an ice elemental, it had to be driven away by force. It was not the confrontation he had been anticipating. 

He flipped the reins over his horse's head and handed them to Arshes.

"Shield yourselves." 

She stared at him, ready for argument. "But you can't --"

"If you don't, the storm will eat Gara."

She had no argument for that. 

He swung down, forgetting them altogether and walked to the edge of the storm. The winds attacked him. He couldn't see from hair in his eyes, so he lowered his lashes and sent out mental tendrils, searching out the heart of the elemental who was wrecking so much havoc. 

There, closer to the heart of this thing, a simmering, powerhouse of boundless rage, lashing out at the world. The rage was all it knew. Rage and fear and hatred. All human emotions. It had picked them up from somewhere and took them to heart with all the passion of nature. 

He stepped into the storm. Everything was white fury. He shielded, rising high and fast, homing in on the power behind it. He gathered power as he went, hoarding it and holding it simmering and restless, waiting to be released. Over countless miles, all obscured by driven ice, and something insubstantial and yet overwhelming loomed ahead. It stirred from its mindless litany of destruction, aware of something fleshy and warm within the boundaries of its presence. It did not like the warmth. It stirred against him. He was ready for it. He mouthed the words that would release his gathered power in a spell. The world shook. The whiteness was obliterated by a blossoming corona of black power. Heat came with it, volatile and unforgiving. Schneider was a tiny speck at the center of it. The spell could have destroyed a city. Or a mountain. The winds howled their fury and the snow crept back, swarming with pelting ice, like a hive of bees shaken out of their nest. The elemental swelled with the offended outrage. Something like a fist of concentrated ice and wind came out of the storm and slammed into Schneider. It shook his shields to the core. Another of the same power struck him from behind, then another from a different direction. He bled from the impacts. He felt the blows in his bones, even though not a chip of ice got through to actually touch his skin. 

He hated dealing with elementals that weren't tamed, that had not taken the physical form that man required of them in order to control them. It was damned hard to hit an insubstantial foe with a concentrated spell like Exodus or Zako-Damero. You had to use the all encompassing, power eating variety of magic that a body just could not fire off one after the other without a chance to recuperate energy. He summoned a fireball spell just to piss the thing off and it was swallowed by the storm in moments. But it didn't like it. Ice elementals didn't like fire. He didn't have a fire elemental in his arsenal powerful enough to best this thing. He didn't know if he could destroy it. Which meant he had to annoy it enough to make it give up its present tantrum and drive it away to more peaceful climes. He needed heat. Persistent, white-hot heat. 

He took a breath, formulating a spell, devising a slight variation in the casting. He gathered power, opened himself wide to keep it coming -- and he started to burn. His shields were blasted out from the inside. His clothing was burned away in the first flash of bluish flame. A small sun flared in the midst of the blizzard. A man writhed at the heart of it, drawing power from inner sources that most wizards couldn't even dream of matching. And still it seemed hardly enough. The spell was designed for a great blast of flame that would explode outwards, quickly consume anything in its path and recede. He was keeping it fueled, not allowing it to dissipate and it was sucking power from him so quickly he felt lightheaded. He moved ponderously into the heart of the elemental. It raged against him, but it couldn't keep him out. All the bits and pieces of it melted at his touch. It hated him. It was determined not to be overwhelmed by him, but it hated the heat of his flames more. So it retreated. He followed. And it retreated further, but did not flee outright. 

In frustration he demanded more power, drawing it from the eather, from the air, from the distant and closely connected aura of Arshes Nei, who sensed his need and opened herself freely. The globe of fire expanded, heat and width doubling, until it licked the earth and ate at the substance of the dark clouds that had gathered the elemental's bidding. The tundra beneath it melted and wet earth sizzled and smoked. The elemental screamed in fury and aversion. It had come out of curiosity after all, and the emotions it had picked up that drove it were fading in lue of the discomfort it was experiencing. It rather disliked humans. 

It gathered itself into a wispy current of cold air and power and sped away back towards the frigid north that had spawned it. The winds slowly began to cease. The mini sun flickered and burned out. Schneider barely controlled his plummet to the earth. He came down on hands and knees, naked as the day he was spawned. The snow continued to fall, but it was a light, drifting snow, not a driven, ice laced one. The ground was wet and muddy, but starting to freeze over again. The elemental might be gone, but the cold system would take a while to dissipate. 

He hated the cold. He especially hated being naked in the cold without the energy to do a Sartor spell or even a decent warming one. He wrapped his arms about himself and shivered, thinking dark and evil things about ice elementals and mad men who thought they spoke the word of god. 

He looked about himself. He was in the lee of a mountain, but the earth was as desolate as the ice fields of the far north. Trees were nothing but toppled, ice crusted shapes that lined the mountain side. It was that way for as far as he could see. Nothing but razed land. This had not been Angelo's doing. If Angelo had survived the release of this thing, he would be surprised. He hoped Kall had -- if for no other reason so that he could smack him repeatedly for summoning something he had obviously not been able to control. First rule of wizardry, don't summon a creature you aren't damn certain you can overcome if need be. Hell, he hadn't over come it, he'd merely driven it away and then more because it hadn't really had its heart in the battle, than anything else. 

He sighed, rubbing his arms for circulation and managed to gather just enough strength to heat himself. Then he started walking. 

He found Kall-Su before Arshes and Gara found him. An hours walk from where he'd come to ground and he saw the ice covered bones of a decimated fortress. It was not recognizable as Angelo's. He'd only seen glimpses of it then after it was destroyed by its own warding spells, before he'd been snapped back to Sta-Veron by his counter summoning spell. Now it was nothing but blocks of ice that looked different from the more natural shapes of iced shrouded trees around it. 

He climbed up amongst the haphazard blocks, slipping here and there, cursing the ice soundly and just happened to come upon something that was not ice, but flesh and blood.

Kall-Su sat against a man high chuck of ice or stone, with his arms around his knees, staring blindly out across the distant, white valley. He was scuffed and bruised, dried blood smeared his skin. Half healed cuts and abrasions marred his face and hands. 

Schneider stood there for a moment, half afraid that it wasn't Kall at all, then common sense set in and with it the realization that it could be no one else, for certainly Angelo had more sense than to just sit here lackadaisically while the world was eaten up by ice around him. 

"Are you fucking insane?" He snapped, angry and miserable and testy with the surge of relief that flooded him. 

Kall slowly turned his head and looked up at him, squinting at the sun behind his shoulders. He blinked. His eyes were bruised, but sane. 

"You don't have any clothes on."

"No shit. You don't have the slightest bit of sense. Why are you sitting out here doing nothing? Why didn't you try and get home? Where the hell is Angelo?" He crouched down to be eye level. 

Kall shook his head, at a loss for reasonable explanation. He unfastened his overtunic instead, slipped out of it and handed it to Schneider. Schneider grimaced and accepted it. He would rather have had answers. 

"Why didn't you make new clothes?"

"Because I spent all my energy chasing away your damned elemental."

"Oh. . . . . . . . Angelo's dead."

Schneider sat back. He'd thought as much, but to hear it confirmed -- he didn't know whether he was elated or disappointed. He would have dearly loved to kill the bastard himself. 

"What happened? Why the hell did you summon something that goddamned huge? Do you have any notion what its done?"

Kall shivered, looked away from him as though he were ashamed. "I -- I didn't mean to. He got inside my head. I panicked -- I was reaching for anything and that responded. I couldn't control it afterwards. I couldn't even sense it. I didn't know until a few days ago it was still active."

"Why?" Schneider raised a dubious brow. 

"It took me that long to get out of the tunnels."

"Again, why?" Something was wrong here. Something more than shell-shock and guilt. "Its been two weeks, Kall. Why did it take you that long to get out? Why didn't you just blast your way free. How the hell could you not sense the damned elemental freezing the west coast solid?"

Kall hugged his knees tighter, opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out, then he shook his head, took a breath and blurted. "He burned me out, DS. And I finished the job when I tried to stop the elemental. I can't summon any power. It just won't come. I can't sense anything. Its like I'm blind." He said this last with his forehead pressed against his knees, miserable and forlorn. Schneider stared at him, stunned, not quite believing it. Probing himself to see what signs he could of such a claim. He could fix almost any physical ill, but the mental ones were beyond him and the channels that focused power and magic were purely mental. He could sense the scarring though. It pulsed with heat and dull residue pain. It was why he hadn't been able to sense Kall before this -- there had been nothing of his unique power signature to latch onto. It was all locked away behind mangled mental amplifiers. 

"Oh my god." He said softly, aghast. A deep set, helpless rage began to build. Angelo had done this and Angelo was beyond his reach. He needed something to strike out at in his fury. He cursed and Kall flinched.

"I'm sorry." Kall said.

"What the hell for?"

Kall just looked at him. He was dirty and injured, looking hardly older than the day he'd found him and just as miserable. He gathered him into his arms. Kall went stiff, not expecting it, then he shuddered and relaxed, pressing his face into Schneider's shoulder. 

"It'll be okay." Schneider promised. "Yoko's better at the mental stuff than I am and her damned father's even better. We'll fix you."

"What if you can't?" Dully asked, more than a little fear behind it. "What good am I without my power? I can't protect Sta-Veron. They won't have me without it. You won't --- have any use for me without it."

Ah, back to the old fear of abandonment. Understandable fear, at least as far as Sta-Veron went. Schneider felt a little miffed that Kall thought he was so shallow as to extend it to him. But, he'd never gone to lengths to dispel that myth. 

"I stopped having a use for you a long time ago, remember? So if that were the case then I wouldn't have bothered to come all the way out here looking for you. And if you tell anyone I said this I'll deny it vehemently, but I love you the same with or without it. So get over it, Kall, I'm tired of boosting your ego."

Kall-Su didn't say anything to that. Just took a few breaths and pushed away from him. Sat back against the icy stone and looked at him skeptically. Schneider put his back to against the adjacent corner, putting out a little more effort on the personal heat spell. The over tunic wasn't long enough come between his bare ass and the damn frigid ground. He sent out a little tendril of power towards Arshes, just to make certain she knew where to come and hoped she didn't waste any time about it. Maybe in a little while he'd have the energy for a Sartor spell. 

Arshes showed up about half an hour later, airborne and worried. And very, very relieved when she saw the both of them. Gara was somewhere behind her, making slower time with the horses. She looked Schneider up and down dubiously, lifting her arched brows at his bare legs. She started to offer her cloak, but he waved her away, having had enough hand outs for one day. With her here, he didn't particularly care if he drained himself of the energy he'd managed to recover. There was nothing alive in these white sheeted mountains that she couldn't handle. There might not have been anything alive for miles and miles. He cast the Sartor spell as simply as possible. Black, black and black without a speck of ornamentation. 

She asked Kall to retell the story he'd already told Schneider. He did, haltingly, giving her an under the lashes belligerent look, as if he dared her to criticize him for any of it. She didn't. She just stared at him, narrow eyed, then surprised the both of them when she swooped down and hugged him. He was more uncomfortable with her embrace than he had been with Schneider's and she broke it quickly, a little embarrassed herself and scooted back. The two of them, Kall-Su and Arshes, had never particularly shown affection for one another -- they'd fought like cats and dogs for most of their lives -- and grudgingly backed each other up when the occasion warranted, during the rest. 

There was no need to make Gara cover the inhospitable distance with horses in tow. Arshes took all three of them up and across the mountain and valley. It took her almost two hours to reach a perceivable end of the path of icy destruction. She was exhausted by the time they spotted Gara and the dark forms of horses against the snow. Somewhere along the way, they'd flown over the collapsed, frozen bones of a shanty village, probably a logging camp, or a trading outpost. There was nothing alive there now, and Kall had gone deathly silent at the sight of it. It must have began to occur to him, what else the elemental storm he'd brought about had done along with turning a good deal of the western mountains and coast into tundra. He wasn't talking much by the time they set down and Gara had to get the details second hand from Schneider and Arshes Nei. 

It was not a particularly pleasant trip back home. They followed the edge where the storm had stopped. There were refugees quick enough, or close enough to the outer rim of the maelstrom that had escaped, that had set up desperate, threadbare camps with what little they had been able to save from their villages, waiting for the hot sun to make the ice recede. Their eyes were dull and bewildered. They were more than willing to part with a mount for Kall for more gold than they'd probably seen their whole lives. Enough to buy a new life somewhere, since the old one had been eaten away by ice. 

It was a week into true summer when they came within view of Sta-Veron's walls. Aside from the gate guard who were plainly jubilant and sent runners ahead to the castle, no one on the streets paid them heed. They were travel worn and dirty, save for Schneider, who couldn't abide filthy clothes and created new ones when it suited him. 

Kiro had the gates open and waiting for them. The castle staff turned out in high spirits, Yoko hugged them all, even Arshes, babbling almost incoherently between breathless kisses with Schneider. 

"I'm so glad you're all back. Is he dead? Do you know what I did? You'd be so proud of me."

They took it inside the cool shadows of the main hall. Kiro was more informative than Yoko. Kiro had the faded traces of a slice along his jaw and limp when he walked. The bandits had attacked the city while they were gone. Brazenly, bolder than they'd ever been in the past with nomad shamans to back them up. The north wall had almost been breached. Men had been killed, but not many on their side. Yoko who had been the only one with sorcerorous skills available had done admirably in shielding Kiro's men long enough for them to take out the shamans and drive away the marauders. Yoko was terribly proud of herself.

"You'd all have done better than me, but I think I made a pretty good showing. Kiro wouldn't let me take up a sword." 

"Smart man." Schneider remarked casually, but Kall grew paler than normal and looked visibly shaken. He looked like he wanted to be elsewhere. But he latched onto Yoko and urged her a few steps away from the gaggle of listeners and asked.

"Have you seen Lily? Do you know what happened to her?"

Yoko's face fell. She had never been good at hiding her emotion. It showed through now like a shroud of doom and Kall almost took a step back from her in denial. 

"She's gone, Kall. She left almost a month ago with her minstrel friends. She was afraid --- she was afraid Angelo would come back instead of you."

She might as well have said Lily was dead. Kall shut up then, slipped through the people in the hall to the silence of the upper floors. No one saw him for the rest of the day, until Schneider brought Yoko to his room to see what she could make of his mangled power channels. She sat in a chair opposite him for a long time, her eyes closed, a light sheen of sweat making her skin glisten, then she opened her eyes and said uncertainly.

"I think maybe we ought to get Father to take a look. There are a few channels that are just singed and raw that will heal on their own, but most of it is just terribly mutilated. I'm sorry, but its beyond me. I -- I don't even know if father can do it and he's the best mind healer I know of."

And that was that. If Kall-Su had an opinion about her declaration he kept it to himself. He showed no emotion whatsoever in face or action. No depression, no anger, no uncertainty of the unknown. Just cold neutrality that no one could see past. 

For three days he hermited himself in his room, not even venturing into his library to read, although Yoko had privately surmised to Schneider that he probably had a head ache severe enough to make the one Schneider had boasted seem inconsequential. Then one night he knocked for entrance to Gara's rooms. Not surprisingly, the Thunder Empress was in attendance, and the both of them looked to Kall-Su expectantly, it being the first time in all the months they had been here that he had ventured into either of their rooms. 

"You said, before this happened, that if I needed your help here, you would freely give it." He said softly. "I need it now."

Gara stared at him, sword across his crossed legs, polishing rag in hand. He opened his mouth, but Kall held up a hand. 

"Protect these people. Schneider does not have the sense of responsibility to do it. I cannot. I cannot be lord here if I can't defend this land."

"Don't be stupid, Kall-Su." Arshes snapped. "You'll heal and you don't need magic to rule a land. Only a handful of rulers do, the rest get along fine."

"We're not talking about them. We're talking about me." He didn't return the rancor that had been in her tone. "Will you do it?" he asked.

Gara drew his brows, catching something subtle that Arshes in her irritation did not. "You asked. You know I will. What are _you_ going to do?"

Kall shook his head. "I don't know." Then he was gone and Arshes and Gara were left to ponder the burden they had just accepted.

The town of Tardash Knoll had been built, predictably enough around a gentle knoll in the north western plainland south of the Great Northern Range. A large, centuries old oak tree dominated the small hillock and under its spreading branches many a town festivity was held. The houses spread out around it, all humble, but well made abodes with neat thatch roofs and sturdy walls. Tardash Knoll was a farming village and the fields spread out beyond the town, well tilled and well planted. It would be a prosperous year. It was already prosperous, at least for the taverns and inns and general stores, for a great many refugees from the terrible and unnatural winter that had struck the western plains and mountains had drifted into town, looking for shelter, for food, for a place to build a new home. Tardash Knoll was a small town, but there was room for growth and not so many had come that the town was at a disadvantage. Most would probably return to remake what they could of their homes since the summer sun was quickly melting away the ice. 

It was a good town for minstrels to ply their trade. Devastated people were always in need of good cheer. And the humble folk of Tardash Knoll were elated at the passage of well traveled and talented bards. They were as hungry for gossip from the world outside their small village as they were for the songs and dances the minstrels delighted them with. 

It was the sixth town they'd passed since leaving the foothills of the Northern Mountains. Every village had welcomed them with open arms. They'd left with pouches full of small coin. Not wealthy by any means but enough to buy them comfortable beds and hearty meals where ever they stopped. Enough to buy trinkets at markets, fine gauzy scarves and bells to enhance the lively dances that the townsfolk seemed to like so much. 

And still it wasn't enough to stop the tears that ushered Lily into sleep every night. The applause, the coin, the freedom of the road, the camaraderie of fellow musicians, all the things she'd always wanted and none of it could wash away the heartache. They tried to help - Dell, Crayl, Allen and Thizura - but they were, being artists, romantic enough at heart to realize that hers was hurt that would only heal with time. Kind words and sympathetic ears were only temporary balms. She could not have asked for better friends than what she found in them. They even put up with her sad songs. She hadn't the heart to sing the happy ones. Even her dances were achingly sensual. 

She walked through the muddy streets now, up towards the knoll, her lute under her arm, a gaggle of town children skipping beside her chattering noisily, asking if she'd play this song or that for them. Asking her to tell them things about the great wide world outside. It had rained hard during the morning, and a fine mist still drifted down, keeping everything drenched. She wore a all weather cloak that kept her clothes mostly dry, but her hair hung in sodden strands about her face. 

There were venders up under the shelter of the great oak on the knoll. Tents where savory food could be smelled all the way down in town. There was a festival of sorts going on, despite the weather. It was end of first harvest day. The newly picked crop had been sent to market just yesterday and today the townsfolk celebrated. Allun and Thizura had been up all night and well into the morning carousing with the harvesters and were still asleep back at the inn. Crayl and Dell might have been playing a few songs at one of the two taverns the town boasted. She thought she might go up the knoll and sit under one of the awnings and strum a few tunes. The rain made her melancholy worse. She had a few tragic ballads scratching to come out and tavern patrons generally didn't have the tolerance for more than one sad song in a row. No one up on the knoll could chase her away, it was common ground. 

So she went up there and played. The children stayed for a while, but soon drifted away, looking for more uplifting things to entertain them. Some of the refugees gathered around her, welcoming the mood, needing to wallow in it. They didn't have coin to give her, but she wasn't playing for coin, she'd do that when the festival began, now she was merely playing to relieve her own emotional strain. 

"Sad songs." A woman said. A woman with patched clothing and weather worn, wrinkled skin who sat under the canvas roof of one of the tents, minding a kettle of simmering stew. 

"Yes." Lily said, half smiling, softly strumming strings with callused fingers. "I've got to stop singing them."

The woman shrugged. "Sometimes they're appropriate. Sometimes they're all a heart can bear to hear. I lost my oldest boy a year ago, and I still feel the way you do now. Nothing light-hearted will do. Who'd you lose?"

Lily blinked at her. "I don't know." She said helplessly, voice trembling. "I ran away before I could find out."

The woman stared at her, not understanding. Lily got up and left, dreading she might be asked to explain. 

Down the hill, down the street with mud squishing in her shoes. The mist had turned into light rain. She sheltered the lute under her cloak. She moved around an empty wagon pulled by two swaybacked, draft horses. Another horse plodded through the mud towards her. Head down she reflexively moved out of its way. Only it stopped and its rider swung down and she had to look up then because her way was half blocked. She blinked water out of her eyes, peering past dripping hair. 

"Lily?"

Oh, gods. She stood rock still, clutching the lute under her cloak so hard the strings bit into her hands. Her heart beat so hard she thought it would burst from her chest and dance around in the mud at her feet. She couldn't form a word. All she could do was stare, half in fear, half convinced she was in the midst of particularly cruel fantasy. _Kall-Su._ Wet, mud spattered, hair two shades darker from the rain, lashes blinking water out of uncertain -- oh so very uncertain, blue eyes. Not the eyes of something she should be afraid of. 

"Is it you?" she found her voice. 

He nodded, whisper of a smile crossing his lips. "Just me."

"Oh --" she felt weak in the knees. She felt like she wanted to run and hide from shame. How did she explain to him her cowardice? How could she justify her lack of faith? She couldn't. "I'm sorry - -" her voice choked up.

He shook his head. "Don't be."

"No." She whispered. "You don't understand --"

"Then I forgive you." Very softly spoken. She hardly heard it over the rain. 

A wagon passed by close enough to spook his horse and the animal shied a little, making him take a few steps to the side. It broke the spell that rooted her to the ground. The lute fell to the mud, forgotten. She rushed forward, wrapping her arms around him, pressing her face into his shoulder and holding on with all her strength just to convince herself he was solid and real. 

"I thought you were dead. I thought if I ever saw you again it would be him and I couldn't bear that."

"He's gone now. Dead."

She sobbed her relief. "You came after me." She was amazed at the notion. If he wanted her to go back, there would be no resisting him. Not now that she'd gone through the hell of believing him lost to her. 

"I love you." He said, simple explanation. There was nothing he could have done that would have bound her heart as unconditionally to him as that plain statement. She almost started sobbing -- it wouldn't be noticed in the rain -- but she hated crying and she'd done so much of it lately. So she swallowed it back, and pulled a little away from him, looking up to study his face, to see what scars were lingering in his eyes. He almost looked peaceful, wet hair mingling with his lashes, water dripping off his elegant nose, down the fine line of his jaw. An all weather black cloak hung about him, but under it he wasn't armored, or dressed in a manner particularly fitting his station. There was a sword in a harness on his saddle, but he was otherwise unarmed. She wanted to ask what had happened, but she was afraid to. He would tell her if he wanted her to know. 

"We should get out of the rain." She said lamely, struggling even for those words. There was a stable by the inn she was staying at. She led him there. It occurred to her that he was alone. No escort, which was unusual. She peered down the street in both directions, half expecting to see men at arms waiting at a discreet distance.

"You're not alone?" she asked.

They passed under the thick beamed doorway of the stable. A sleepy stableboy stirred on the pile of straw he'd been dozing and ambled towards them, eyes widening a little as he recognized the high quality of the steed which had entered his domain. 

"I am." Kall-Su said. 

She couldn't comprehend why. "They let you --?" she faltered, uncertain how the mechanics of being a ruling lord worked, but absolutely certain that such a being never undertook expeditions without some sort of honor guard or escort. 

He wiped dripping hair out of his eyes, handing the stable boy the reins to the horse along with an unidentified coin. The boy was as impressed by the coin as the horse and promised the best of care. 

"I neglected to mention I was leaving." He remarked carefully. "It was preferable to an argument."

She blinked at him, amazed. "But -- won't --? They'll be --? You'll want to hurry back."

"No. No particular hurry. Circumstances have -- changed."

She didn't understand. She stared at him, blinking. "But, what will you do?"

He glanced away from her, using the boy unsaddling his horse at the back of the stable as a distraction. The uncertainty flickered in his eyes again briefly.

"I thought --" he looked back to her, voice soft, like the brush of velvet across her flesh. " -- I might stay with you for a while. If --- you have no objection to my company."

An almost hysterical laugh escaped her. If she had no objection ---? Oh, gods, if her lungs didn't need air to breath or her body blood to keep it warm and pliant. 

"Why?" she whispered, huge eyed and trembling. "Why would you want to, with all the things that you have?"

"Not so many things. Let me tell you later. Not here."

He was a little scared, she heard it in his voice, saw it in his eyes. She was terrified. And rapturous and shivering from more than cold and rain. She stepped in close and pressed her lips lightly to his. Not as much as she wanted to do, but there was no need to entertain the stableboy. 

"All right." She agreed. "I can't think of a single objection to save my life."

Of course she didn't know what the minstrels would think, she was part of a troupe now, but she rather thought they'd be relieved to have her sing things other than sad songs. She felt a rather joyous one bubbling up in her now. She let out a little squeak of dismay as she recalled her lute, discarded in the street outside and dashed out into the rain to retrieve it. Kall-Su followed her, looked down at her muddy, instrument in concern as she hastily tried to wipe it clean with her cloak. He extended one side of his own cloak to shield her from the driving rain as they walked towards the inn proper. 

From within the lighthearted strands of music could be heard. It drifted into the street pulling other traveling in towards it. She thought it would be a very good night.

The End of Aftermath

Author's note

If you got this far, congratulations. It was a long haul. I can't quite believe I got all the things I planned so long ago actually accomplished. Reward me for my efforts. Let me know if you loved it, hated it, what you think of it. Do you want to hear more from my own alternate section of the Bastard Universe? There are other tales swimming around inside my head. 

Thanks all

Pam

6-24-99


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